Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiii 


Ed/Psych 

Lib. 

LB 

1536 

T37 


[BRARY 


THE  UNIVERSITY 


OF  CAL IFORNIA 


LOS  ANGELES 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  PEDAGOGY 
OF  WRITING 


; 

Psychology  and  Pedagogy 
of  Writing 

CJ  // 

A  Resume  of  the  Researches  and  Experiments  Bearing  on  the 
History  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing 

BY 

MARY  E.  THOMPSON,  A.M.,  Pd.D. 


Haltimorr 
WARWICK  AND  YORK,  INC. 

1911 


Copyright   1911 

By 
WARWICK  &  YORK,  Inc. 


Ed.  /Psych. 
Library 


T37 


CONTENTS. 

Preface     7 

Chap.      I.     Introduction 11 

Chap.     II.     Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet  .  15 

Chap.  III.     Resume  of  the  Experiments  Bearing  on 

the  Psychology  of  Writing     ....  37 

Chap.   IV.     Pedagogy  of  Writing' 81 

Bibliography 121 

Index  124 


3003558 


PREFACE. 

Years  of  practical  teaching  and  supervision,  the  earnest 
study  of  psychology  and  its  application  to  education,  a  wide 
observation  of  the  school  work  being  dbne  by  this  and 
other  nations,  have  all  been  potent  forces  in  convincing  me 
that  the  reason  why  practice  lags  so  far  behind  principles 
in  psychology  is  that  the  greater  portion  of  the  results  ob-  I 
tained  by  expert,  psychological  experimenters  remains  filed  \ 
away  on  the  research  shelves  of  the  libraries  of  our  great  ; 
universities,  unknown  and  unread  by  the  large  mass  of  I 
educators.    Our  new  psychology  is  in  the  nascent  or  forma- 
tive stage  and  the  material  still  remains  scattered  and  un- 
organized, so  much  so  that  only  recently  has  any  reliable 
author  undertaken  to  glean,  sift,  organize  and  show  the 
application  of  the  most  important  principles  of  psychology 
to  the  teaching  of  the  common  school  subjects.    For  years 
teachers  have  had  their  brains  fairly  satiated  with  method 
books  evolved  from  the  inner  consciousness  of  this  or  the 
other  author  of  uncertain  psychological  caliber. 

For  convenience  all  method  may  be  classed  as:  (1)  his- 
torical, or  doing  as  has  been  done  before  by  others;  (2) 
"trial  and  success,"  or  hitting  upon  successful  ways  by  nu-. 
merous  trials  of  different  methods  of  procedure,  or  follow- 
ing out  those  discovered  by  others;  and  (3)  psychological 
method,  based  upon  the  study  of  children  and  their  near 
and  remote  needs.  Much  of  the  psychological  method  may 
be  found  in  the  first  two  mentioned  methods,  but  it  is  un- 
known to  the  mechanical,  unintelligent  teacher. 


8  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

The  historical  method  is  the  one  commonly  used  by  the 
non-progressive,  untrained  teacher  who  is  too  indifferent 
or  mentally  languid  to  even  summon  up  courage  to  try 
something  new.  If  the  examples  followed  in  the  historical 
method  have  been  set  by  a  successful  teacher,  the  results 
of  the  one  copying  these  may  be  very  satisfactory,  but  the 
teaching  is  in  most  instances  blind  imitation  and  deaden- 
ing to  the  future  development  of  the  teacher.  Even  so- 
called  trained  teachers  graduating  from  normal  schools 
and  colleges  use  historical  methods  many  times  or  rather 
their  teaching  is  saturated,  as  it  were,  with  the  overwhelm- 
ing personalities  and  methods  of  certain  teachers.  Better 
far  is  it  for  teachers  to  have  the  way  to  the  highest  source 
of  authority  indicated  to  them,  to  get  perspective,  "sky," 
fundamental  principles  and  inspiration  and  direction  to 
forge  ahead  for  themselves!  Without  the  scientific  atti- 
tude toward  teaching,  it  is  made  to  approach  the  narrow- 
ing, mechanical  work  of  the  clerk,  the  factory  laborer,  the 
miner. 

The  wide-awake  teacher  will  use  the  "trial  and  success" 
method  and  thus  advance  mentally  and  professionally,  but 
the  experimentation,  made  blindly  many  times,  involves 
enormous  waste  of  time,  especially  where  large  masses  of 
children  are  to  be  advanced.  The  place  for  experimental 
method  along  psychological  lines  naturally  falls  to  experi- 
mental schools  and  training  departments  where  the  groups 
are  small  and  the  work  is  supervised  or  done  by  thoroughly 
prepared  teachers.  Originality  is  a  forceful  characteristic, 
yet  it  may  cause  the  work  of  the  teacher  to  become  the 
manipulation  of  a  series  of  extraneous  devices  having  no 
psychological  foundation. 

The  advantages,  both  to  the  teacher  and  child,  of  having 
methods  based  on  the  psychology  of  the  present  time  and 
in  the  future  advanced  with  the  new  facts  of  child  nature 


Preface.  9 

discovered  are  so  self-evident  as  to  require  no  explanation. 
Hence  the  teacher  of  today  needs  to  be  a  student,  keeping 
well  abreast  with  the  signs  of  the  times  in  the  psychological 
world,  wide  awake  and  alert  to  discover  and  make  use  of 
every  important  result  obtained,  to  be  interested  in  the 
large  questions  in  education,  to  keep  the  psychological  per- 
spective cleared  of  blinding  routine  and  unintelligent 
method.  Psychological  truth  has  been  so  enlarged  and 
changed  during  the  last  decade  or  two  that  a  teacher  who 
has  not  kept  up  with  the  progress  made  has  inevitably  be- 
come a  Rip  Van  Winkle  in  education. 

Teachers  are  not  usually  willfully  negligent  of  their  pro- 
fessional duties;  in  fact  quite  otherwise,  but  the  lack  of 
time,  heavy  responsibility,  weariness,  lack  of  opportunity 
or  not  knowing  what  to  read  causes  a  lethargy,  despoiling 
them  of  their  psychological  attitude  of  mind  and  future 
development  as  educators. 

Of  all  the  common  school  subjects,  writing  has  been  the 
one  most  neglected  and  least  understood  by  teachers. 
There  has  been  much  confusion  and  fumbling  of  methods 
.and  little  effort  made  to  base  the  principles  of  teaching 
upon  the  laws  of  psychology.  The  present  work  attempts 
to  gather  from  modern,  scientific  psychology,  and  espe- 
cially from  recent  investigations  in  genetic  and  dynamic 
psychology,  all  the  principles  bearing  on  handwriting,  and 
to  show  the  application  of  these  to  the  teaching  of  writing. 
Numerous  books  are  to  be  found  upon  this,  that,  or  the 
other  system  of  penmanship,  but  it  remains  for  the  present 
one  to  suggest  and  interest  the  reader  in  a  larger,  deeper, 
more  scientific  view  of  the  whole  subject  of  writing  and  in 
the  new  psychology  still  in  the  formative  stage.  It  is 
hoped  that  this  book  will  in  some  measure  not  only  ac- 
quaint the  reader  with  the  results  of  the  scientific  study 
of  voluntary  movements  and  the  antecedent  of  such  move- 


10  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

ments  but  be  suggestive  for  further  reading  and  thinking 
along  other  lines. 

To  the  up-to-date  psychologist  the  material  presented 
will  not  be  at  all  new.  For  material  I  wish  to  thank  the 
authors  from  whom  I  borrowed  freely  and  gave  due  credit; 
for  help  and  guidance  I  want  to  thank  Dean  Thomas  M. 
Balliet  and  Dr.  Paul  Radosavljevich  of  New  York  Univer- 
sity, School  of  Pedagogy;  for  preparation  to  do  the  work, 
my  efficient  and  able  teachers  in  the  psychological  depart- 
ments of  the  Michigan  State  Normal  College,  Ypsilanti; 
the  Michigan  State  University,  Ann  Arbor;  Columbia  Uni- 
versity, Teachers'  College,  and  New  York  University, 
School  of  Pedagogy,  New  York  City,  have  my  sincere  ap- 
preciation and  thanks;  and  for  giving  me  inspiration  and 
earnest  zeal,  I  affectionally  thank  my  aged  mother  in  whose 
sick  room  the  greater  part  of  this  book  was  written,  and 
with  whom  it  is  still  my  privilege  to  remain. 

M.  E.  T. 

Redford,  Mich.,  March  8,  1911. 


CHAPTER    I 
INTRODUCTION. 

The  Importance  of  Writing  and  Recent  Interest  Shoion 
in  the  Subject. 

Since  the  desire  of  communicating  ideas  seems  to  be 
deeply  implanted  in  every  human  being,  it  is  a  question  of 
great  moment  to  study  carefully  the  means  of  communica- 
tion. The  two  most  usual  modes  of  gratifying  the  desire 
for  expression  are,  (1)  by  sounds  addressed  to  the  ear,  and 
(2)  by  representations  or  marks  exhibited  to  the  eye;  or,  in 
other  words,  by  speech  and  writing.  The  first  method  was 
rendered  much  more  complete  by  the  invention  of  the  sec- 
ond, because  by  it  was  opened  a  door  for  the  communica- 
tion of  information  through  the  sense  of  sight  as  well  as 
by  means  of  hearing.  Speech  may  be  thought  of  as  the 
substance  and  writing  as  the  shadow  which  followed  it. 
Speech  must  be  conceded  to  be  the  noblest  acquisition  of 
mankind,  and  writing  the  most  useful  art.  Speech  emi- 
nently distinguishes  man  from  the  brute  creation;  writing 
marks  the  difference  between  civilized  mankind  and  un- 
civilized savages.  It  can  readily  be  understood  why  this  is 
so,  for  by  writing  our  thoughts  are  perpetuated  not  only 
for  ourselves,  but  best  of  all  in  an  extensive,  communica- 
tive way  for  the  benefit  of  others.  Without  the  art  of  writ- 
ing, the  labors  of  our  ancestors,  in  every  branch  of  knowl- 
edge, would  have  been  lost  to  us,  and  our  own  best  thought 
contributions  would  fail  to  reach  future  posterity.  The 
word-of-mouth  method  of  communication  gave  us  tradi- 

11 


12  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

tion,  but  not  authentic  history,  as  the  latter  can  only  be 
compiled  from  written  material.  By  means  of  writing, 
painting,  medals  and  sculpture  all  the  successive  improve- 
ments in  philosophy,  science  and  the  arts  have  been 
brought  about. 

In  the  common  transactions  of  life,  whether  for  profit  or 
pleasure,  intercourse  would  be  very  limited  without  the  as- 
sistance of  writing.  By  this  art  distance  is,  as  it  were, 
annihilated  and  business  man,  statesman  and  friend  meet 
in  regions  the  most  remote.  In  these  days  of  rapidly  ad- 
vancing civilization  and  commercial  activity,  there  are  more 
demands  made  on  the  individual  to  express  himself  clearly 
and  legibly  in  writing  than  ever  before.  Writing  is  only  a 
tool  of  expression,  but  it  is  one  that  must  be  handled 
quickly  and  effectively.  The  writer  needs  to  have  complete 
command  of  the  art  of  writing  so  that  his  entire  attention 
may  be  placed  upon  the  thought  to  be  expressed  rather 
than  upon  the  form.  In  business  it  is  absolutely  essential 
that  the  mind  be  freed  from  all  thought  of  technique  of 
form,  as  a  digression  in  thought  or  an  ambiguous  form 
may  lead  to  great  loss  of  time  or  money. 

The  art  of  writing  is  as  old  as  civilization  itself;  it  is 
thought  probable  that  in  North  Babylonia  the  pictograph 
stage  had  long  been  passed  eight  thousand  years  ago.  We 
are  told  that  seven  thousand  years  ago  in  Egypt,  Babylonia 
and  Crete  both  reading  and  writing  were  already  of  hoary 
antiquity.  The  written  word  has  always  been  of  mysterious 
significance  to  the  savage.  Among  such  people,  the  person 
who  could  use  symbols  for  communication  was  next  to  the 
gods;  hence  written  language  ministered  to  forms  of  wor- 
ship and  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  church.  In  this  way 
the  currency  of  civilization  and  learning  became  written 
language;  consequently  the  reverenced  part  of  education 
has  not  been  the  sciences  as  first  hand  studies  of  reality, 


Introduction.  13 

but  language  and  books  have  been  made  the  prominent 
constituents  of  the  curriculum  until  very  recent  years. 

In  our  own  day  the  inability  to  read  and  write  stamps  one 
as  an  ignoramus.  The  three  R's,  Reading,  'Kiting  'Rith- 
metic,  that  for  so  many  years  made  up  the  curriculum  of 
our  common  schools,  show  in  what  high  estimation  these 
subjects  were  held.  With  the  incoming  of  the  idea  of  uni- 
versal education  after  the  Reformation,  people  were  taught 
to  read  and  write  in  order  that  they  might  be  able  to  be- 
come intelligent  readers  of  the  Bible  and  other  religious 
literature  and  be  enabled  to  express  their  views  in  perma- 
nent form.  Arithmetic  was  added  to  the  curriculum  for 
business  purposes.  At  the  present  time,  along  with  the 
multiplication  of  books  and  the  great  commercial  pressure 
brought  to  bear  upon  mankind,  writing  has  assumed  a  new 
importance.  Circumstances  and  conditions  no  longer  allow 
a  person  to  write  laboriously,  slowly  and  imperfectly,  as 
was  the  custom  in  the  past,  but  business  and  economy  of 
time  demand  that  when  one  writes  it  must  be  at  a  high  rate 
of  speed  and  as  legibly  as  possible. 

Since  the  child,  instead  of  the  subject-matter,  has  become 
the  center  of  our  educational  system,  and  people  have 
sought  to  understand  the  child's  physical,  intellectual  and 
moral  natures  instead  of  judging  these  from  the  standpoint 
of  those  found  in  adult  life,  psychologists  have  directed 
their  attention  to  experimental  work;  this  is  especially  true 
of  the  past  twenty  years  or  more,  before  which  time  little 
reliable  work  was  done.  The  study  of  voluntary  movement, 
the  formation  of  habit,  fatigue,  cross  education,  etc.,  have 
furnished  an  unusually  attractive  field  for  investigation  by 
psychologists,  and  as  a  result  much  data  has  been  given  to 
the  educational  world  upon  which  a  more  scientific  peda- 
gogy may  be  based. 

It  is  with  this  thought  in  mind  that  the  present  writing 
has  been  undertaken.  The  methods  for  each  important 


14  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing. 

school  study  should  have  a  psychological  basis  and  be  put 
in  such  permanent  form  that  teachers  and  supervisors  of 
such  subjects  may  be  able  to  read  and  understand.  Far  too 
much  of  the  data  of  experimental  psychology  is  stowed 
away  in  fragmentary,  technical  form  to  be  referred  to  by 
psychologists  only;  consequently  actual  practice  is  changed 
but  little,  and  the  great  majority  of  teachers  remain  in 
ignorance  of  what  has  been  done  by  psychologists  to  put 
education  on  a  more  scientific  and  economical  basis.  Dr. 
Huey,  speaking  of  the  need  of  a  more  scientific  basis  for 
each  school  subject  and  that  the  results  obtained  by  experi- 
menting should  be  put  in  readable  form  for  teachers,  says: 
"Consider  the  need  of  this  in  the  various  branches.  Not  to 
mention  writing,  a  branch  in  which  there  is  perhaps  the 
most  of  needless  confusion  and  in  which  perhaps  the  great- 
est benefit  would  be  derived  from  such  a  concentration  of 

data "     (24,  Preface,  p.  8.) 

In  the  following  chapters  it  is  proposed  to  trace  out  the 
development  of  the  alphabet;  to  collate  some  of  the  best 
recent  investigations  bearing  on  the  psychology  of  writing, 
and  upon  these  as  a  basis  to  formulate  and  apply  the  edu- 
cational principles  deduced  therefrom.  Many  experiments 
have  been  performed,  but  the  field  has  in  no  sense  been 
fully  covered,  hence  it  remains  for  psychologists  to  care- 
fully carry  on  further  investigations.  The  principal  aims 
will  be  to  tell  what  has  been  done,  to  collect  the  fragments, 
as  it  were,  and  after  a  careful  estimation  of  the  reliability 
and  worth  of  these,  to  formulate  from  the  results  of  the 
experiments  taken  up  some  pedagogical  principles  and 
show  how  these  explain  and  suggest  improvements  in  the 
present  practice  in  penmanship.  Such  a  gathering  together 
of  data  bearing  on  the  subject  of  writing  has  not  before 
been  undertaken,  and  it  is  with  the  hope  that  the  following 
may,  in  a  small  way,  prove  effectual  in  improving  the  pre- 
vailing practice  that  the  present  work  has  been  undertaken. 


CHAPTER    II 
HISTORICAL  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  ALPHABET. 

Theory  of  the  Evolution  of  Language. 

In  order  to  more  fully  understand  and  appreciate  the 
development  of  writing  one  must  go  back  to  the  earliest 
evolution  of  language  itself,  the  sum  and  substance  of  writ- 
ing. Drummond  writes  that  in  order  to  fully  appreciate  the 
development  of  language  we  must  take  our  places  in  the 
primeval  forest  with  early  man  and  put  ourselves  in  touch 
with  his  real  experiences  and  necessities.  (14,  p.  156.) 

Co-operation  was  one  of  the  earliest  principles  to  be  hit 
upon  in  the  course  of  evolution.  Gregariousness  was  an 
established  institution  long  before  men  had  learned  to  form 
themselves  into  tribes  and  clans  for  mutual  strength  and 
service.  The  bees  in  hives,  the  ants  in  colonies,  the  birds 
in  flocks  and  the  wolves  in  packs  are  a  few  of  the  social 
types  of  today  that  are  abundant  and  dominant  in  all  parts 
of  the  world,  indicating  that  the  gregarious  state  has  excep- 
tional advantages  in  the  upward  struggle. 

The  most  important  advantage  is  the  mental  strength  of 
a  combination  and  the  physical  strength  of  numbers.  For 
instance,  every  animal  in  the  herd  shares  the  observational 
powers  of  all  the  rest.  If  one  animal  hears  a  sound  of 
danger,  then  that  knowledge  is  shared  in  by  all  the  other 
animals.  Thus  in  helping  one  another  to  avert  a  crisis  of 
danger,  the  value  of  this  mutual  aid  is  so  great  that  gre- 
garious animals,  although  many  times  timid  and  defence- 
is 


16  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing, 

less  as  individuals,  have  survived  in  abundant  numbers  to 
occupy  the  highest  places  in  nature. 

The  co-operative  principle  depends  upon  the  ability  of  the 
members  of  the  herd  to  communicate  with  each  other.  The 
signalling  system  if  developed  by  one  herd  and  not  by 
another  would  give  the  herd  possessing  it  the  greater 
chance  for  survival;  hence  the  evolution  of  the  signal 
system.  New  circumstances  and  relations  arising  called 
for  additions,  and  vocal,  visible,  audible  came  into  use. 
Drummond  gives  this  example:  "When  a  deer  throws  up 
its  head  suddenly,  all  the  other  deer  throw  up  their  heads. 
That  is  a  sign.  It  means  'listen.'  If  the  first  deer  sees  the 
object  which  has  called  its  attention  to  be  suspicious,  it 
utters  a  low  note.  That  is  a  word.  It  means  'caution.'  If 
next  it  sees  the  object  to  be  not  only  suspicious,  but  dan- 
gerous, it  makes  a  further  use  of  language-intonation. 
Instead  of  the  low  note  'listen,'  it  utters  a  sharp  loud  cry 
that  means  'run  for  your  life.'  Hence  these  three  kinds  of 
language — a  sign  or  gesture,  a  note  or  word,  an  intona- 
tion." (14,  p.  158.) 

EVOLUTION  OF  WRITING. 

Writing  has  evolved,  it  is  thought,  through  the  same  gen- 
eral stages  as  the  evolution  of  speech.  First  there  was  the 
gesture  language,  corresponding  to  the  signaling  system 
spoken  of  in  connection  with  the  herd,  that  was  used  by 
primitive  man  as  a  means  of  communicating  with  his  fel- 
lows; next  there  was  the  onomatopoetic,  or  growl  writing, 
ideographs,  in  which  forms  of  actual  objects  were  imitated 
as  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  the  picture  of  a  man  was 
drawn  to  represent  the  idea  of  man,  etc.  This  is  the  note 
or  word  stage  found  in  the  evolution  of  language.  Grad- 
ually intonation  was  added — accent — for  extra  meaning  or 
extra  emphasis;  this  stage  in  its  earlier  development  is  well 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  17 

illustrated  in  the  Chinese  representation  of  complex  ideas, 
and  will  be  explained  later. 

"The  really  important  factor  in  human  progress  has  not 
been  so  much  the  discovery  of  a  method  by  which  words 
can  be  recorded  as  it  has  been  the  invention  of  some  facile 
graphic  device,  such  as  the  alphabet,  by  means  of  which 
the  art  of  writing  can  be  so  far  simplified  as  to  become  at- 
tainable before  the  years  of  adolescence  have  been  passed." 
(41,  p.  4).  A  people  may  possess  the  art  of  writing  without 
the  knowledge  of  an  alphabet,  but  such  a  system  of  non- 
alphabetic  writing  will  either  be  so  limited  in  its  power  of 
expression  as  to  be  of  little  practical  value,  or  else  it  will 
be  too  difficult,  complicated  and  unsuitable  for  general  use. 
The  methods  of  writing  used  by  the  Egyptians,  Assyrians 
and  Chinese  go  to  prove  that  without  the  alphabet  any 
complete  system  for  the  graphic  representation  of  speech 
is  an  acquirement  so  difficult  as  to  demand  the  labor  of  a 
lifetime.  Under  such  conditions,  science  and  religion 
necessarily  tend  to  remain  the  exclusive  property  of  a 
sacerdotal  caste;  extended  national  culture  becomes  impos- 
sible. Thus  a  system  of  writing  instead  of  being  the  most 
effective  means  of  progress  may  become  instead  one  of  the 
most  powerful  means  of  enslaving  the  masses  of  mankind. 
The  invention  of  the  alphabet  in  its  present  form  has 
proved  to  be  the  most  difficult  enterprise  which  the  human 
intellect  has  ever  undertaken.  In  the  words  of  Dr.  Taylor: 
"To  achieve  the  letters  as  we  know  them  has  taxed  the  in- 
tellect of  the  three  most  gifted  races  of  the  ancient  world. 
It  was  begun  by  the  Egyptians,  continued  by  the  Semites, 
and  finally  perfected  by  the  Greeks."  (41,  p.  4.) 

The  hieroglyphic  writing  of  the  Egyptians,  although  it 
is  the  source  of  all  existing  alphabets,  is  far  from  being 
the  only  graphic  system  invented  or  the  only  one  which 
attained  the  alphabetic  stage  of  development.  Various 


18  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

races  have  succeeded  in  inventing  methods  of  writing  en- 
tirely independently  of  one  another.  The  characteristic 
fact  to  be  remembered  is  that  the  starting  point  and  the 
general  direction  of  development  have  been  the  same;  i.  e., 
all  systems  of  writing  have  been  found  to  have  had  their 
beginnings  in  rude  pictures  of  objects;  these  pictures,  be- 
coming conventionalized,  more  or  less  gradually  came  to  be 
used  to  represent  words,  and  later  became  the  symbols  of 
more  or  less  complex  and  abstract  thoughts. 

It  is  now  our  purpose  to  inquire  into  the  primitive  forms 
of  writing  from  which  all  alphabets  are  the  abbreviated 
descendants,  to  instance  similar  stages  found  among  the 
nations  of  today,  and  to  show  how  our  own  alphabet  has 
reached  such  a  high  stage  of  perfection.  After  a  careful 
survey  of  the  long  period  covered  by  the  development  of 
writing,  we  are  enabled,  for  the  sake  of  convenience  and 
brevity,  to  arbitrarily  divide  the  whole  into  three  stages: 

1.  The  Mnemonic,  or  Memory-aiding. 

2.  Ideograms: 

(1)  Pictures  of  Objects. 

(2)  Pictorial  Symbols  or  Words. 

3.  Phonograms: 

(1)  Verbal  Signs. 

(2)  Syllabic  Signs. 

(3)  Alphabetic  Signs. 

1.  THE  MNEMONIC  STAGE.— In  this  some  tangible 
object  is  used  as  a  message,  or  for  record,  between  people 
living  at  a  distance  from  each  other,  and  also  for  the  pur- 
pose of  accrediting  the  messenger.  This  stage  borders  on 
and  anticipates  the  symbolic  stage  of  expression.  Good 
examples  of  the  mnemonic  are  the  "quipus"  or  knotted 
cords,  still  used  by  the  Puna  herdsmen  of  the  Peruvian 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet. 


19 


plateaux  to  register  their  herds,  and  also  by  the  Paloni 
Indians  of  California  in  business  transactions. 

The  history  of  the  "quipu"  is  a  long  one;  the  idea  being 
still  with  us  in  both  the  rosary  upon  which  the  Roman 
Catholics  count  their  prayers,  and  in  the  knot  tied  in  our 
handkerchief  to  help  our  weak  memory,  as  well  as  in  the 
sailor's  log-line.  The  device  was  of  widespread  use,  reach- 
ing its  most  elaborate  form  among  the  ancient  Peruvians, 

from  whose  lan- 
guage the  term 
"quipu,"    mean- 
ing knot,  is  borrowed.  The 
figure  below   (taken  from 
The  Story  of  the  Alphabet, 
p.  37,  by  Clodd)  will  give 
an  idea  of  the  form. 

To  the  main  cord  at  given 
distances  are  fastened 
thinner  cords  of  different 
colors,  each  cord  being 
knotted  in  divers  ways  to 
represent  special  purposes 
and  each  color  having  a 
peculiar  significance  of  its 
own,  i.  e.,  red  strands 
stood  for  soldiers,  yellow 
for  gold,  white  for  silver, 
green  for  corn,  etc.,  while 
the  meaning  of  a  single 
knot  was  ten,  two  single 
knots  twenty,  double  knot 
one  hundred,  two  double 
knots  two  hundred.  Be- 

u,  for  reckoning,  &c.  sides  being  8.  convenience 

in    reckoning,    they    were 


20  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

used  for  keeping  the  annals  of  the  empire  of  the  Incas,  for 
sending  orders,  for  preserving  records  of  the  dead,  as  in 
old  Egypt,  etc. 

At  the  present  time  small  cords  are  used  by  the  native 
tribes  of  Ardrah  in  West  Africa;  while  other  African  tribes 
have  devised  message  sticks  similar  to  the  well-known 
native  Australian  type.  More  highly  developed  knot- 
reckoning  is  found  among  the  Mexican  Zuni,  and  in  more 
primitive  form  among  some  of  the  North  American  In- 
dians. A  generation  ago  the  Hawaiian  tax-gatherer  kept 
account  of  the  assessable  property  throughout  the  island 
on  cords  from  four  to  five  hundred  fathoms  long.  The 
Chinese  used  knotted  cord  prior  to  the  invention  of  writ- 
ing, and  its  use  is  also  found  depicted  in  Egyptian  hiero- 
glyphics. In  1834  the  Houses  of  Parliament  were  de- 
stroyed through  the  overheating  of  stoves  burning  up  an 
accumulation  of  tally-sticks  that  had  been  used  to  keep 
the  accounts  of  persons  lending  money  to  the  government. 
In  Scotland  fifty  years  ago  the  baker  boy  made  a  notch 
on  his  "nick-stick"  for  every  loaf  of  bread  left  on  his 
rounds  (9,  p.  41).  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  use  of 
objects  for  recording  was  almost  universal  in  the  distant 
past  and  still  survives  in  some  measure. 

Because  of  our  familiarity  with  the  wampum  of  the 
North  American  Indian,  little  need  be  said  on  the  subject. 
The  use  of  wampum  belts  is  not  widespread.  The  belts 
consist  of  hand-made  beads  or  perforated  shells  arranged 
in  various  more  or  less  conventionalized  patterns  on  bark 
filament,  hemp  or  deerskin  strips  or  sinews,  the  ends 
being  selvedged  by  sinews  or  fibers  of  hemp.  The  pat- 
terns are  usually  pictorial  symbols  recording  events  in 
the  history  of  the  tribes  or  treaties  between  tribes.  The 
Penn  belt  shown  below  (taken  from  Clodd's  Story  of  the 
Alphabet,  p.  46,  and  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the  His- 
torical Society  of  Pennsylvania)  derives  its  name  from 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  21 

the  tradition  that  it  is  the  identical  belt  given  probably 
in  1701  to  William  Penn  by  the  Iroquois  in  confirmation 
of  the  friendly  relations  then  established  between  them. 
The  design,  as  does  the  average  belt  of  this  kind,  ap- 
proaches the  ideographic  stage  of  writing  and  represents 
two  figures,  one  an  Indian  grasping  a  white  man's  hand 
(as  evidenced  by  the  wearing  of  a  hat).  The  oblique 
bands  are  the  symbols  of  the  federation  of  Iroquois  known 

as  the  "Five  Na- 
tions." "The  Iroquois 
league  is  spoken  of 

wampum.  in     their     Book     of 

Rites  as  Kanastat-sikowa,  the  great  framework.  It  is  this 
mighty  structure  which,  when  the  belt  in  question  was 
given,  overshadowed  the  greater  part  of  North  America, 
that  was  indicated  by  the  rafters,  shown  as  oblique  bands." 
(21,  p.  244.) 

2.  IDEOGRAMS. — These  are  pictures  intended  to  rep- 
resent either  things  or  thoughts.  They  are  of  two  kinds: 
(1)  Pictures,  or  actual  representations  of  objects,  and  (2) 
pictorial  symbols  suggesting  abstract  ideas.  "The  earliest 
record  which  we  possess  of  any  actual  event  is  the  scene 
depicted  on  a  fragment  of  an  antler,  which  was  found  in 
the  rock  shelter  at  Langerie  Basse  in  Auvergne.  It  por- 
trays a  primeval  hunter  covered  with  long  hair  creeping 
up  to  a  gigantic  urus  feeding  in  the  grass,  and  he  is  seen 
in  the  very  act  of  casting  a  spear  at  his  unsuspecting 
enemy  (23,  p.  16).  Dr.  Hoffman  thinks  that  primitive 
man,  in  his  attempt  to  record  and  transmit  graphically  his 
thoughts,  selected  such  objects  within  his  environment  as 
were  most  frequently  encountered  in  his  struggle  for 
existence,  i.  e.,  simple  representations  of  animals  and  birds 
would  be  drawn  to  indicate  success  in  hunting,  or,  depicted 
upon  some  conspicuous  rock,  notify  others  that  the  game 


22  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

represented  by  the  picture  was  to  be  found  in  that  local- 
ity (23,  p.  1).  Clodd  writes:  "The  necessity  of  identifying 
personal  as  well  as  tribal  property,  especially  in  land  and 
live  stock,  led  to  the  employment  of  various  characters, 
more  or  less  pictographic,  which  have  their  representatives 
in  signaries  used  in  ancient  commerce  and  in  manufactur- 
ers' trade-marks"  (9,  p.  46).  In  the  marks  used  for 
branding  cattle,  Prof.  Ernst  of  Caracas  believes  that  he 
can  recognize  survivals  of  Indian  writing.  The  same 
author  states  that  in  tattooing,  aside  from  its  symbolic  and 
religious  significance  marking  the  connection  of  the  man 
with  his  clan-totem  or  individual-totem  and  also  its  deco- 
rative purpose,  there  is  also  a  utilitarian  purpose.  It  is 
known  that  certain  tribes  of  the  Red  Indians  tattoo  both 
sexes  so  that  the  captured  individual  may  be  identified 
and  ransomed  in  case  of  war  (23,  p.  2). 

The  grave  of  a  chief  is  indicated  by  his  totem  scratched 
upon  a  slab;  tribal  boundaries  are  marked  by  stones  en- 
graved with  the  totem  of  the  tribe.  The  very  curious 
records  on  the  Pictish  stones  of  Scotland;  the  pictures  on 
the  magic  drums  of  the  Laplanders;  the  drawings  found 
on  rocks  in  Australia,  Siberia,  Peru  and  Arabia  not  only 
show  how  keenly  men  of  different  races  have  striven  to 
record  their  thoughts  and  to  leave  behind  them  some  last- 
ing memorials  of  their  deeds,  but  these  drawings  are  also 
of  value  in  proving  the  essential  similarity  of  the  means 
used  by  different  people  to  give  effect  to  their  desires. 

A  further  extension  of  the  system  of  picture  writing 
became  possible  when  it  was  discovered  that  complex 
ideas  could  be  conveyed  by  combinations  of  simple  ideo- 
grams. Thus,  in  the  primitive  Chinese  writing  we  find  a 
"wife"  is  denoted  by  the  combination  of  the  conventional- 
ized pictures  of  a  "woman"  and  a  "broom,"  and  the  verb 
"to  love"  is  expressed  by  the  pictures  of  a  "woman"  and 
a  "son." 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  23 

3.  PHONOGRAMS. — The  next  advancement  appeared  in 
the  form  of  rebus,  or  image  writing  (designated  by  Dr. 
Britton  as  ikonomatic),  in  which  several  objects  were 
combined.  The  form  of  conundrum  called  the  rebus  is 
an  example  of  the  simplest  kind  of  phonograms.  In  the 
rebus  the  picture  of  an  object  is  taken  to  denote  any 
word  or  part  of  a  word  which  has  the  same  sound  as  the 
name  of  the  thing  pictured.  It  is  thought  to  be  true  that 
the  reason  why  children  like  rebus  writing  now  so  much 
is  that  at  about  a  certain  age  they,  too,  as  the  race  has, 
pass  through  this  stage  of  development.  If,  like  the 
ancient  Egyptians,  we  were  to  adopt  a  circle  with  a  central 
dot  as  our  ordinary  written  symbol  for  the  sun,  then  we 
would  have  a  pure  ideogram,  but  if  we  were  to  go  on,  and, 
after  the  Egyptian  or  Chinese  methods,  were  to  use  the 
same  symbol  to  express  also  the  word  "son,"  we  should 
have  a  phonogram  of  that  primitive  type  which  has  re- 
peatedly served  to  bridge  over  the  gap  between  picture 
ideograms  and  phonetic  characters.  It  is  thought  prob- 
able that  the  adoption  of  the  important  step  by  which  the 
advance  was  made  from  ideograms  to  phonograms  arose 
out  of  the  necessity  of  expressing  proper  names  (23,  p.  22). 
The  script  of  the  ancient  Mexican  supplies  examples  of 
the  change  from  the  pictographic  to  the  phonetic  stage. 
For  example,  the  name  of  one  of  the  kings  was  Itzcoatl,  or 
"Knife-Snake,"  and  the  name  was  sometimes 
written  as  in  the  first  figure,  the  stone  knives 
on  the  back  of  the  snake  were  known  by  the 
name  of  (itzli),  while  the  snake's  name  was 
Coatl.  At  other  times  the  name  was  written 
as  shown  in  the  second  figure,  the  first  syllable, 
itz,  being  represented  by  a  weapon,  itz(tli),  the 
lower  character,  and  above  this  appears,  not  the 


24  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

head  of  a  snake,  but  instead  an  earthen  pot, 
co(mitl),  surmounted  by  the  sign  for  water 
a  (tl).  The  two  latter  pictures  were  used  to 
suggest  a  total  sound,  the  name  of  the  object 
entirely  unlike  either  pictures  (42,  p.  94). 
Phonograms  are  the  graphic  symbols  of  sounds.  As  a 
usual  thing  they  have  arisen  out  of  conventionalized  ideo- 
grams which  have  been  taken  to  represent  sounds  instead 
of  things.  In  the  case  of  Chinese  characters  we  find  the 
most  notable  instance  of  a  graphic  system  which  has  never 
succeeded  in  advancing  beyond  the  most  rudimentary  stage 
of  conventionalized  picture  writing.  Through  research  it 
has  been  found  that  when  the  intricate  and  queer  Chinese 
characters  are  traced  back  to  their  earliest  types,  they  are 
found  to  be  conventionalized  forms  descended  from  rude 
pictures  to  which  they  now  bear  little  or  no  resemblance, 
i.  e.,  Kiuen,  a  "dog,"  is  denoted  by  the  character^,  and 
mu,  "wood,"  by/fc.  These  two  characters  present  a 
much  closer  resemblance  to  each  other  than  either  of  them 
possess  to  the  object  whose  name  it  bears.  Yet  the  diffi- 
culty disappears  when  these  characters  are  traced  back  to 
their  earliest  forms.  The  character  for  mu,  "wood,"  was 
originally  written  JfJ  or  ^p;,  a  form  in  which  the  rep- 
resentation of  a  tree,  with  its  branches,  trunk  and  roots, 
can  be  plainly  recognized.  In  the  other  case  we  find  the 
character  for  kiuen,  "a  dog,"  takes  the  form  ft,  4| ,  and 
^v,  in  which  it  is  not  difficult  to  perceive  a  rude  outline 
intended  for  the  picture  of  a  dog  (41,  p.  20).  The  whole 
forty  thousand  words  found  in  the  Chinese  dictionary  are 
represented  by  symbols  standing  for  sound-words,  phono- 
grams, together  with  determinatives  as  keys  to  the  precise 
meaning  to  be  attached  to  the  phonograms,  e.  g.,  the  sound 
pa  has  eight  distinct  significations,  that  is,  there  are  eight 
different  words  which  are  thus  pronounced.  One  of  the 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  25 

phonograms  which  expresses  the  sound  pa  is  (Jl  ,  the  orig- 
inal of  which  c*'  is  apparently  the  picture  of  the  tail  of 
some  animal.  When  this  phonogram  is  used  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  key  of  plants  the  symbol  denotes  a  banana 
tree;  with  the  key  of  iron  it  signifies  a  war-charm;  with 
the  key  of  sickness  it  means  a  scar;  with  the  key  for  mouth 
it  stands  for  a  cry,  and  so  on  for  the  other  four  meanings 
which  the  sound  may  have  (41,  pp.  26-27).  The  Chinese 
language  is  a  language  of  roots;  it  has  no  terminations  to 
denote  number,  case,  tense,  mood  or  person;  the  same 
word,  without  change  of  form,  may  be  used  as  a  noun, 
a  verb,  an  adjective,  an  adverb  or  a  participle.  It  is  a 
monosyllabic  language,  consisting  almost  entirely  of  homo- 
phones, that  is,  the  same  articulation  has  to  do  duty  for 
several  widely  different  words,  hence  the  use  of  "keys," 
"radicals,"  or  "primitives,"  as  they  are  called.  In  the 
Egyptian  and  Cuneiform  these  "keys"  are  called  "deter- 
minatives." In  the  English  language  one  learns  which 
meaning  is  to  be  conveyed  by  the  aid  of  variant  spelling, 
e.  g.,  rite,  write,  right,  wright.  In  order  to  be  able  to 
write  an  ordinary  business  letter  in  the  Chinese  language 
one  would  have  to  commit  to  memory  some  six  or  seven 
thousand  of  these  groups  of  characters.  It  has  been  found 
that  a  diligent  Chinese  student  of  twenty-five  years  of 
age  has  barely  acquired  the  same  amount  of  facility  in 
reading  and  writing  as  that  attained  by  an  American  child 
at  the  age  of  ten;  hence  in  China  and  in  other  countries 
not  possessing  an  alphabet,  few  people  learn  to  read  and 
write,  and  these  few  are  known  as  the  learned  caste. 

Syllabism,  the  next  stage  in  the  progress  of  writing, 
finds  its  best  illustration  in  the  development  of  the  Jap- 
anese writing  out  of  the  Chinese.  About  the  third  century 
A.  D.,  at  the  time  of  the  great  eastern  extension  of  the 
Buddhist  f*ith,  the  Japanese  came  into  contact  with  the 


26  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

civilization  of  China,  and  obtained  a  knowledge  of  the 
characters  in  which  the  Chinese  literature  was  written. 
The  Japanese  language  was  polysyllabic,  and  the  Chinese 
characters,  which  are  verbal  phonograms,  could  only  be 
used  for  the  expression  of  the  polysyllabic  Japanese  words 
by  being  treated  as  syllabic  signs.  A  number  of  charac- 
ters sufficient  to  constitute  a  syllabary  having  been  se- 
lected, it  was  found  that  the  whole  apparatus  of  "keys" 
might  be  rejected.  Here,  however,  the  development  has 
stopped.  It  seems  strange  that  a  people  as  ingenious  and 
inventive  as  the  Japanese  would  not,  during  the  one  thou- 
sand years  that  have  elapsed  since  the  introduction  of  the 
Chinese  characters,  develop  their  syllabary  into  an  alpha- 
bet. The  fact  that  such  a  development  has  not  taken  place 
is  sufficient  to  show  that  the  working  out  of  an  alphabetic 
principle  of  writing  is  not  as  easy  or  obvious  a  matter  as 
might  be  supposed.  It  might  be  noted  in  passing  that 
now  when  the  Japanese  have  come  in  contact  with  Western 
civilization  and  have  discovered  how  convenient  and  simple 
the  Roman  alphabet  is,  a  movement  to  substitute  it  for  the 
native  syllabary  has  sprung  up. 

Authorities  who  have  made  a  careful  study  of  the  matter 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  general  law 
governing  the  advance  from  one  stage  in  the  development 
of  writing  to  the  next.  A  next  higher  stage  is  only 
attained  by  the  transmission  of  a  graphic  system  from  one 
nation  to  another.  In  addition  to  the  example  just  cited, 
the  transmission  of  the  Aztec  hieroglyphics  to  the  Mayas 
of  Yucatan,  of  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  to  the  Semites, 
and  the  thrice-repeated  transmission  of  the  Semitic  alpha- 
bet to  Aryan  nations — to  the  Greeks,  to  the  Persians  and 
to  the  Indians,  are  facts  confirming  this  general  rule.  The 
best  example  of  this  general  law  is  found  in  the  case  of 
the  repeated  transmission  of  the  Cuneiform  writing.  It 
was  invented  by  the  Accadians,  a  Turanian  people,  and 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  27 

transmitted  to  the  Semitic  Assyrians  and  Babylonians; 
while  out  of  the  Semitic  Cuneiform  arose  on  the  one  hand 
the  Turanian  Proto-Medic  syllabary,  and  on  the  other,  the 
Cuneiform  alphabet  of  the  Aryan  Persians  (41,  p.  39). 

Alphabetic  signs  or  letters  represent  the  elementary 
sounds  into  which  the  syllables  can  be  resolved.  How 
their  development  came  about  will  become  clear  and  under- 
standable during  the  following  treatment  of  the  Egyptian 
hieroglyphics.  The  earliest  extant  inscription  in  the  world 
is  a  tablet  now  in  the  Ashmolean  Museum  at  Oxford, 
which  was  erected  by  Sent,  a  king  of  the  second  dynasty, 
to  the  memory  of  Shera,  who  appears  to  have  been  his 
grandson.  M.  Matiette's  chronological  scheme  places  the 
date  at  about  4700  B.  C.  This  affords  conclusive  proof 
that  even  at  that  date  the  hieroglyphic  writing  was  already 
an  extremely  ancient  graphic  system  with  long  ages  of 
previous  development  stretching  out  behind  it.  The 
Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  like  every  other  primitive  mode  of 
writing,  began  with  picture  ideograms,  many  of  which  con- 
tinued to  be  used  to  the  very  last.  Abstract  ideas  which 
could  be  directly  represented,  were  expressed  by  means  of 
symbolic  pictures,  e.  g.,  battle  Q^i,  by  two  arms,  one  hold- 
ing a  shield  and  the  other  a  javelin.  The  next  stage  of 
development  must  have  been  that  the  primitive  ideographic 
sign  gave  place  to  the  verbal  phonogram,  and  then  later 
these  verbal  phonograms  came  to  be  used  as  syllabic  signs; 
finally  these  syllabic  signs  were  combined  so  as  to  form 
compound  phonograms  on  the  principle  of  the  rebus. 

Egyptian  writing  also  contained  alphabetic  symbols  out 
of  which  our  alphabet  has  grown.  In  the  inscription  of 
King  Sent,  three  of  these  alphabetic  characters  are  em- 
ployed to  spell  the  monarch's  name,  which  reads  (41, 
p.  60).  "Two  of  our  English  letters,  n  and  d, 
are  derived  in  strict  historical  filiation  from 
two  of  the  alphabetic  signs,  WWA'and<=^:;',  by  means  of 


D 


28  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

which  the  name  of  King  Sent  is  expressed.  Alphabetic 
symbols  on  the  Egyptian  monuments  go  to  show  that  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet  are  older  than  the  pyramids — older 
probably  than  any  other  existing  monument  of  human 
civilization,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac"  (41,  p.  61). 

The  Babylonians,  Assyrians,  the  Medes  and  the  Japanese 
succeeded  only  in  passing  through  the  syllabic  stage, 
while  the  oldest  hieroglyphic  records  of  the  Egyptians  had 
already  advanced  to  the  great  conception  of  alphabetic 
writing.  Symbols  for  vowel  sounds  are  found  in  the  syl- 
labaries of  these  nations,  but  the  more  difficult  conception 
of  a  consonant  was  not  even  approached.  The  notion  of 
a  consonant,  a  sound  that  cannot  be  sounded  except  in 
conjunction  with  some  other  sound,  different  from  itself, 
is  very  difficult;  it  involves  the  analysis  of  the  syllable 
into  its  ultimate  phonetic  elements.  Canon  Taylor  states: 
"All  that  remained  to  be  done  was  to  take  one  simple 
step— boldly  to  discard  all  the  non-alphabetic  elements,  at 
once  to  sweep  away  the  superfluous  lumber"  (41,  p.  68). 
This  step  they  never  took,  but  continued  to  use  eye-pic- 
tures side  by  side  with  that  of  ear-pictures,  instead  of 
advancing  to  the  use  of  fixed  signs  for  certain  sounds  (9, 
p.  115). 

Even  at  the  present  time  we  still  continue  to  use  phono- 
graphic and  ideographic  signs  to  a  considerable  extent. 
Grotefend  claims  that  several  of  the  Roman  numerals  are 
ancient  ideograms.  I,  II,  III,  may  be  regarded  as  pictures 
of  fingers,  and  it  is  probable  that  V  was  at  first  a  picture 
of  the  fork  of  the  hand,  the  fingers  collected  and  the  thumb 
apart,  so  that  VV  or  X  represents  the  two  hands,  while 
IV  and  VI  would  be  a  picture  of  the  hand  with  the  sub- 
traction or  addition  of  a  finger.  In  technical  writing  such 
terms  as  T-square  and  S-hook  and  phrases  such  as  "Q 
before  clock  4  minutes,"  and  "  D  rises  at  8  h.  30  min.," 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  29 

survive  to  show  that  even  in  the  midst  of  the  highest 
European  civilization  the  spirit  of  the  earliest  and  rudest 
form  of  writing  is  not  yet  quite  extinct.  The  zodiacal 
and  planetary  signs  used  by  astronomers  are  also  ideo- 
grams, e.  g.,  the  symbol  $  is  the  caduceus  of  Mercury  en- 
twined by  two  serpents,  ?  is  the  mirror  of  Venus  with  its 
handle,  and  cf  is  the  shield  and  spear  of  Mars.  Other  ideo- 
grams used  by  us  are  the  crown  and  the  broad  arrow, 
sundry  trade  marks  and  armorial  bearings,  together  with 
several  printers'  signs,  such  as  Jglr3,  !  and  =.  Certain 
shop  signs,  such  as  the  barbers'  pole  with  its  spiral  band- 
ages, which  is  a  significant  ideogram  of  the  blood  letter; 
the  three  golden  balls  of  our  pawnbrokers  is  a  curious 
survival  of  the  boluses  which  denoted  the  ancestral  calling 
of  the  Florentine  family  of  the  Medici.  In  £.  s.  d.  we  have 
characters  of  alphabetic  origin  used  simply  as  convenient 
phonograms  standing  for  the  words  "pounds,"  "shillings" 
and  "pence."  &c.,,  ?,  $,  Ibs.,  cwt.  belong  to  the  same 
class.  Most  of  the  Arabic  numerals  are  degraded  forms 
of  Semitic  letters;  while  the  successive  forms  of 

ET 


show  that  the  algebraical  sign  -)-  is  a  contraction  of  the 
Latin  word  et,  as  —  is  of  minus  (41,  p.  81). 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  ALPHABET. 

The  immediate  parentage  of  our  English  alphabet  is  not 
difficult  to  determine,  as  our  Roman  capitals  are  practically 
identical  with  letters  employed  at  Rome  in  the  third  cen- 
tury B.  C.,  such  as  are  seen  in  the  well-known  inscriptions 
on  the  tombs  of  Scipios.  It  has  been  found  that  the 
primitive  alphabet  of  Rome  was  derived  from  a  local  form 
of  the  Greek  alphabet  prevailing  in  Boeotia  and  Euboea 


30  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

about  the  sixth  century  B.  C.  This  Eubcean  alphabet  is 
thought  to  have  been  introduced  into  Italy  by  means  of 
colonies  from  Chalcis  which  were  established  in  Sicily  and 
also  in  central  Italy  at  Cumae  and  Neapolis.  The  Chal- 
cidian  alphabet  was  a  variety  of  the  archaic  alphabet  of 
Greece,  judging  from  the  numerous  inscriptions,  the  earl- 
iest of  which  may  probably  belong  to  the  eighth  or  ninth 
century  B.  C. 

The  classical  writers  agree  in  attributing  the  invention 
of  letters  to  the  Phoenician,  from  whose  trading  posts  in 
the  j£gean  they  were  obtained  by  the  Greeks.  Herodotus 
says:  "The  Phoenicians  introduced  into  Greece  the  knowl- 
edge of  letters,  of  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the  Greeks 
had  heretofore  been  ignorant"  (41,  pp.  70-74). 

An  examinataion  of  the  alphabet,  however,  gives  evi- 
dence through  the  names,  number,  order  and  form  that 
they  are  of  Semitic  origin.  The  very  word  alphabet  is 
derived  from  the  names  of  the  two  letters  alpha  and  beta, 
which  stand  at  the  head  of  the  Greek  alphabet  and  which 
are  plainly  identical  with  the  names  aleph  and  beth  borne 
by  the  corresponding  Semitic  characters.  In  Greek  these 
names  mean  nothing,  but  they  are  significant  Semitic 
words,  aleph  denoting  an  "ox,"  and  beth  a  "house"  (41, 
p.  75).  By  some  authorities,  as  Taylor,  the  Semitic  alpha- 
bet is  considered  the  source  from  which  all  existing  alpha- 
bets have  been  derived. 

Down  to  a  very  recent  time  the  classical  tradition  was 
very  generally  discarded,  and  the  origin  of  the  alphabet 
was  thought  to  be  by  the  highest  authorities  an  unsolved 
problem.  Now  scholars  seem  to  agree  not  only  as  to  the 
source  of  the  Semitic  alphabet,  but  also  as  to  the  special 
place,  mode  and  period  in  which  it  must  have  originated. 
A  French  Egyptologist,  Emanuel  de  Rouge,  in  1859,  was 
the  first  to  formulate  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  alpha- 


Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  31 

bet.  M.  de  Rouge  refers  the  origination  of  the  Semitic 
alphabet  to  the  period  of  five  or  six  centuries  during  which 
a  race  of  Semitic  kings  ruled  in  Delta.  His  method  of 
investigation  began  by  determining  the  oldest  known 
forms  of  the  Semitic  letters.  For  comparison  with  these 
he  selected  such  of  the  Egyptian  hieratic  characters  as 
were  used  at  the  time  the  Semitic  people  occupied  Delta, 
and  as  a  result  he  found  that  the  primitive  form  of  almost 
every  Semitic  letter  can  be  easily  and  naturally  deduced 
from  the  form  of  its  normal  hieratic  prototype.  It  is  said 
that  the  secret  of  his  success  in  solving  the  problem  lay 
in  the  fact  that  he  sought  for  the  immediate  prototype  of 
the  Semitic  letters  not  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  as 
many  before  him  had  done,  but  among  the  cursive  char- 
acters which  the  Egyptians  had  developed  out  of  their 
hieroglyphics  and  which  were  employed  for  literary  and 
business  purposes  (41,  p.  88).  The  origin  of  the  alphabet 
has  been  placed  in  time  as  being  between  the  23d  and  17th 
centuries,  possibly  the  19th  century,  says  de  Rouge. 

Recent  investigations,  particularly  the  excavations  in 
Crete,  reported  by  Sir  Arthur  Evans  (15,  pp.  270-372), 
seem  to  establish  the  fact  that  Greece  is  far  older  than  has 
been  thought,  and  that  a  flourishing  civilization  existed  in 
the  ^Egean  at  least  as  early  as  3000  B.  C.,  with  centers  in 
Crete  and  probably  later  in  Mycenae;  also  that  there  was 
close  intercourse  between  this  civilization  and  that  of 
Egypt  about  2500  B.  C.  The  vEgean  script,  according  to 
these  investigations,  seems  to  have  been  in  use  long  before 
Phoenicia  existed,  and  as  Phoenician  history  only  goes 
back  to  about  1600  B.  C.,  Phoenicia's  chance  for  com- 
mercial importance  seems  only  to  have  come  with  the  fall 
of  Mycensn  civilization. 

However  this  may  be,  we  know  that  Phoenicia  was  domi- 
nant in  the  Mediterranean,  and  probably  took,  for  business 


32 


Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 


purposes,  the  alphabet  material  that  was  to  be  found  and 
gave  to  it  a  more  practical  form.  No  one  can  perhaps 
judge  just  how  much  was  taken  from  the  cursive  writing 
of  the  Egyptians  or  how  much  was  obtained  from  other 
sources,  yet  we  are  sure  that  it  is  possible  to  trace  the 


1 

ecrpri/ifi 

/>»iT» 
CltN 

c  a  f  CK 

LATfH 

(Iftn 

I 

Eag'.e    .     . 

& 

£ 

A 

A 

A 

\ 

a 

A 

A 

\aa 

N 

2 

Crane    .    . 

¥ 

^ 

^ 

* 

B 

R 

/3 

& 

B 

B  b 

3 

3 

Throne  .     . 

H 

s 

7 

7 

r 

r 

J~V 

< 

C 

(ccsg 

3 

4 

5 
6 
7 
8 

9 
10 

Hand     .    . 

es 

*°> 

A 

A 

A 

A 

B 

\> 

D 

b^d 

*r 

Maiander   . 

rn 

m 

^ 

^ 

E 

e 

e 

t 

E 

ee 

Ji 

Cerastes  ^   . 

*Co_ 

,> 

s 

y 

YF 

F 

* 

F 

ff 

n 

Duck    .    . 

& 

t 

J 

t 

I 

z 

ZC 

t 

Z 

z 

} 

Sieve      .    . 

• 

G? 

8 

I 

H 

H 

M 

B 

H 

hh 

n 

Tongs    .    . 

<=: 

tea. 

® 

e 

0 

0 

#$ 

® 

b 

Parallels    . 

\\ 

y 

\ 

r 

1 

1 

L 

I 

1 

'  J 

•» 

IT 

12 
13 

14 

Bowl      .    . 

<^» 

A 

1 

^ 

K 

K 

K  K. 

K 

K 

k 

3 

Lioness  .     . 

£» 

^ 

L 

\/ 

A 

A 

A 

t 

L 

1  ) 

* 

Owl  . 

& 

^ 

"7 

M 

A 

M 

M-/U 

r 

/^ 

<D  m 

O 

Water    .    . 

~«~ 

»•* 

J 

1 

N 

N 

//  Y 

r 

XV 

n  n 

5 

'5 

16 

Chair-back 

— 

•^^ 

1 

J 

— 

1 

£, 

m 

+ 

X  x 

o 

o 

0 

O 

O 

o 

- 

y 

17 

18 

Shutter  .     . 

i 

*^ 

? 

1 

r 

TT 

n  -a 

p 

P 

P 

E: 

Snake    .    . 

"S 

/ 

r 

r 

M 

fr 

r 

^ 

'9 

Angle    .     . 

a 

'A 

9 

r 

9 

9 

Q 

qq 

P" 

20 
21 
22 

Mouth  .    . 

<=> 

<?) 

1 

s 

P 

F 

9  e 

P 

R 

P  r 

i 

Inundated  \ 
Garden    / 

MI 

* 

w 

^ 

i 

c 

c.cr 

5 

S 

/fs 

l» 

Lasso     .     . 

} 

t) 

+ 

T 

T 

T 

r 

T 

T 

C  t 

n 

i 

ii 

III 

IV 

V 

xr 

Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  33 

actual  pictorial  origin  of  some  of  the  characters  of  the 
alphabet  to  the  Egyptian,  i.  e.,  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphic 
owl,  mulak,  becomes  the  sign  for  its  initial  letter  m,  and 
later  is  conventionalized  more  and  more  until  the  present 
form  is  reached,  as  is  shown  in  the  table  (9,  p.  130). 

The  fact  is  established  that  the  Phoenicians,  who  were 
of  the  Semitic  race,  were  full  of  commercial  activity,  and 
when  they  came  among  the  Hellenes,  they  brought  with 
them  their  collected  system  of  abbreviated  alphabetic  char- 
acters. To  these  the  Greeks  added  still  other  characters 
and  modified  those  introduced.  The  table  on  page  34  shows 
the  names  and  order  of  the  Greek  and  Semitic  letters,  the 
Hebrew  being  selected  as  the  type  of  a  Semitic  alphabet 
most  familiar  at  the  present  time  (41,  p.  75). 

LATIN  ALPHABET.— This  is  by  far  the  most  important 
of  all  the  alphabets  derived  from  the  Chalcidian  type  of 
the  Hellenic,  as  explained  before.  The  date  of  introduc- 
tion of  the  Greek  alphabet  into  Italy  has  been  established 
as  being  about  the  eighth  century  B.  C.  The  ultimate 
dominance  of  the  Latins  brought  about  the  abolition  of 
every  other  alphabet  except  their  own,  which,  becoming 
the  alphabet  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  then  of  Christen- 
dom, secured  an  everlasting  supremacy.  Through  it  the 
Greek  and  Roman  culture  was  conveyed  to  Western  Eu- 
rope, and  it  is  now  the  vehicle  of  all  the  culture  of  the  pro- 
gressive races  of  the  world.  In  all  the  essentials  the  Latin 
alphabet  is  identical  with  the  Greek,  yet  it  took  its  own 
line.  "The  earliest  Indo-European  or  'Aryan'  language 
contained,  so  far  as  can  be  discovered,  twelve  consonants 
and  three  vowels  (i,  a,  u),  and  to  these  the  Latin  added 
e  and  o.  It  at  first  rejected  the  Greek  K,  and  used  C  for 
the  sounds  of  both  k  and  g,  but  later  on  added  a  bar  to 
the  lower  end  of  C,  converting  it  into  G.  Similarly,  R  is 
but  a  variation  of  P,  by  the  addition  of  a  stroke  below 


34 


Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 


THE  HEBREW  ALPHABET. 

The 
Primitive 
Order. 

THE  GREEK  ALPHABET. 

\i 

S| 

Phonetic 

Values. 

Forms. 

Names. 

Meanings. 

Forms. 

Names. 

Phonetic 
Values. 

I  Numerical  1 
"  1  Valuta.  1 

1 

'a 

N 

Aleph 

ox 

I 

a 

Alpha 

a 

2 

I 

3 

Beth 

house 

II 

ft 

Beta 

b 

2 

3 

0 

3 

Girael 

camel 

III 

7 

Gamma 

ff 

3 

4 

d 

T 

Daleth 

door 

IV 

d 

Delta 

d 

4 

5 

h 

n 

He 

window 

V 

€ 

E-psilon 

e 

1 

6 

V 

i 

Vau, 

hook 

VI 

y 

Vau 

caret 

6 

7 

z 

r 

Zayin 

weapons 

Til 

f 

[Zeta] 

z 

7 

8 

ch 

n 

Cheth 

fence 

VIII 

n 

Eta 

e 

8 

9 

t 

a 

Teth 

serpent? 

IX 

e 

Theta 

ih 

9 

10 

y 

•> 

Yod 

hand 

X 

t 

Iota 

i 

10 

20 

k 

3 

Kaph 

palm  of  hand 

XI 

K 

Kappa 

k 

• 

30 

t 

h 

Lamed 

ox-goad 

XII 

\ 

Lambda 

I 

30 

40 

m 

» 

Mem 

waters 

XIII 

n 

Mu 

m 

40 

50 

n 

j 

Nun 

fish 

XIV 

V 

Nu 

n 

60 

60 

8 

D 

Samekh 

post 

XV 

£ 

[Xi] 

X 

60 

70 

'a 

y 

'Ayin 

eye 

XVI 

0 

0-micron 

Q 

70 

80 

P 

D 

Pe 

mouth 

XVII 

Tf 

Pi 

f 

80 

90 

is 

¥ 

Tsade 

javelin  ? 

XVIII 

% 

[San] 

caret 

900 

100 

1 

> 

Qoph 

knot? 

XIX 

t, 

Koppa 

caret 

90 

200 

r 

1 

Kesh 

head 

XX 

P 

Rho 

r 

100 

300 

sli 

D 

Shin 

teeth 

XXI 

IT 

[Sigma] 

a 

200 

400 

t 

n 

Tau 

mark 

XXII 

T 

Tau 

t 

300 

Historical  Development  of  the  Alphabet.  35 

the  crook.  And  while  the  later  Greek  rejected  Q,  the  Latin 
retained  it"  (9,  pp.  195-6). 

The  Romans  used  two  sorts  of  characters,  capitals  and 
cursive,  in  the  early  empire.  The  capitals  were  square- 
shaped,  and  were  used  for  inscriptions  and  other  writing 
demanding  prominence,  as  we  use  capitals  now,  borrowing 
the  old  Roman  forms.  The  cursive  or  running  characters 
are  the  originals  of  our  small  types,  and  were  used  for 
correspondence  and  other  purposes  where  rapid  writing 
was  the  object. 

Both  Y  and  Z  were  late  importations  from  the  Greek 
into  the  Latin,  being  previously  used  only  in  Greek  loan- 
words to  denote  sounds  peculiar  to  the  Greek;  hence  be- 
cause of  their  late  introduction  they  were  placed  at  the 
end  of  the  alphabet. 

Some  of  our  letters  are  of  no  more  use  to  us  than  they 
were  to  the  Romans,  i.  e.,  Q  and  X,  and  K  makes  C  super- 
fluous. As  a  consequence  we  have  only  twenty-three  let- 
ters to  represent  at  least  thirty-two  sounds.  Thus  we  see 
that  our  alphabet,  like  our  spelling,  which  is  at  war  with 
our  pronunciation  to  the  bewilderment  of  school  children 
and  foreigners,  is  what  it  is  because  of  the  lack  of  any 
consistent  rule  (9,  p.  200). 

A  word  may  be  added  as  to  the  direction  of  writing, 
and  how  it  came  to  be  from  left  to  right,  as  we  have  it 
now.  It  has  been  found  by  investigation  of  the  Moabite 
Stone,  discovered  in  1868  by  Dr.  Klein  during  his  travels 
in  Moab,  that  the  Semitics  wrote  from  right  to  left.  After 
the  alphabetic  characters  were  brought  into  Greece  the 
direction  of  the  writing  was  modified,  and  among  the 
Athenians  it  took  the  serpentine  form,  running  around 
the  material  written  upon.  Later  the  plough-wise  writing, 
proceeding  alternately  from  right  to  left  and  from  left  to 
right — just  as  oxen  when  ploughing  draw  the  alternate 


36  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of    Writing. 

furrows  in  opposite  directions — came  to  be  the  prevailing 
one.  Finally,  the  more  convenient  habitude  prevailed,  all 
the  lines  being  written  from  left  to  right.  The  change  of 
direction  was  plainly  effected  by  a  process  of  very  gradual 
development,  and  must  have  occupied  a  lengthened  period 
of  time. 

This  historical  treatment  has  only  been  intended  to  be 
suggestive  of  the  general  method  in  which  our  alphabet 
developed,  and  to  give  a  general  insight  into  the  stages 
through  which  any  alphabet  must  pass  before  it  can  reach 
its  highest  state  of  perfection. 


CHAPTER  III. 

RESUME  OF  THE  EXPERIMENTS  BEARING  ON  THE 
PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WRITING. 

Analysis  of  the  subject 
(1)   NEUROLOGICAL  ANALYSIS. 

ANTECEDENT  OF  VOLUNTARY  MOVEMENT.— In 
order  to  clearly  understand  voluntary  movement  one  must 
go  back  to  a  study  of  the  nervous  system  itself.  The 
whole  nervous  system  is  usually  divided  into  (a)  the  funda- 
mental portion,  or  that  which  man  possesses  in  common 
with  lower  animals  and  which  is  well  developed  in  the 
child  at  birth,  and  (b)  the  accessory  part  or  that  part  which 
has  been  superadded  during  the  course  of  evolution.  This 
new  part  differentiates  the  nervous  system  of  man  from 
that  of  the  highest  of  the  lower  animals,  and  it  is  either 
not  present  in  the  human  embryo  or  exists  only  in  an 
embryonic  condition.  Man  has  acquired  erect  posture, 
movements  of  the  hands  as  organs  of  prehension,  move- 
ments of  the  voice  and  articulation,  facial  expression, 
etc.  (39,  p.  1).  All  complex  movements  are  acquired  con- 
siderably after  birth.  Ross,  about  1880,  was  the  first  per- 
son to  distinguish  the  parts  of  the  nervous  system  by  use 
of  the  terms  fundamental  and  accessory  (37,  p.  21).  The 
more  fundamental  and  older  racial  movements  appear 
before  the  newer  and  less  fundamental  regardless  of  the 
order  of  complexity,  except  in  so  far  as  the  accessory  as  a 
rule  tend  to  be  more  complex  than  the  fundamental  (8, 
p.  39). 

37 


38  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

Flechsig's  investigations  have  shown  that  the  fibers  con- 
nected with  the  centers  that  control  reflexly  the  funda- 
mental movements  are  medullated  before  birth,  while  on 
the  other  hand  fibers  connected  with  the  higher  centers 
are  not  medullated  (16,  p.  113).  It  is  generally  accepted 
that  when  a  nerve  fiber  acquires  its  fatty  sheath  or  becomes 
medullated,  it  is  then  functionally  mature;  the  sheath 
serving  about  the  same  purpose  as  the  rubber  covering 
does  to  the  electric  wire  it  surrounds — prevents  wasteful 
radiation  of  the  nerve  current. 

One  of  the  conditions  emphasized  by  modern  psychology 
as  a  requisite  for  active  attention  is  preparedness,  or 
muscular  tension.  The  present  most  generally  accepted 
theory  of  the  control  of  the  muscles  was  presented  by  Dr. 
Hughlings  Jackson,  in  about  1872,  and  is  known  as  the 
Three-Level-Theory  of  the  nervous  system  (39,  p.  3). 
The  lowest  level  consists  of  the  nerve  cells  of  the  spinal 
cord,  medulla  and  pons;  the  movements  on  this  level  would 
be  such  vital  movements  as  those  pertaining  to  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood,  respiration,  digestion,  crying,  etc. 
The  grasping  acts  of  infants  immediately  after  birth,  such 
as  hanging  on  to  a  rod  or  finger  and  supporting  the  weight 
of  the  body,  belong  to  this  level.  Although  the  child  at 
birth  can  grasp  a  rod  and  support  itself,  yet  it  has  no  con- 
trol over  such  movement  and  usually  loses  this  power  after 
a  few  days.  "This  sensori-motor  apparatus  is  perfectly 
organized  before  birth  and  the  sensori-motor  action  is 
typically  automatic  (39,  p.  5). 

The  middle  level  includes  the  basal  ganglia  of  the  brain, 
and  also  the  sensory  centers  of  hearing,  sight,  and  the 
other  special  sense  ganglia.  Impressions  from  the  periph- 
ery are  not  sent  directly  to  these  centers,  but  through  the 
ganglia  of  the  lowest  level,  and  the  movements  controlled 
by  these  centers  are  controlled  through  the  centers  of  the 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       39 

lowest  level.  Grasping  an  object,  removing  an  offensively 
smelling  object,  and  such  other  movements  as  higher  ani- 
mals, some  imbeciles,  and  young  normal  children  perform 
without  much  thought,  are  examples  of  movements  of  this 
middle  level. 

The  highest  level  claimed  hypothetically  the  remaining 
portion  of  the  brain.  Control  is  exercised  over  each  part 
of  the  body  by  each  level  and  each  level  is  both  sensory 
and  motor;  consequently  the  motor  areas  in  the  brain 
must  have  sensory  cell  elements  and  the  highest  centers 
must  have  motor  elements  (39,  p.  6).  It  has  been  found 
that  the  most  simple  nervous  arrangements,  centers,  and 
levels  are  the  most  organized,  while  the  most  complex  is 
the  least  organized.  It  is  well  that  this  is  so,  for  if  the 
centers  of  the  highest  level  were  highly  organized,  there 
could  be  little  modification  effected,  and  as  a  result  few 
acquirements  could  be  made  or  adaptations  to  new  circum- 
stances brought  about. 

A  study  of  the  ascent  in  the  hierarchy  of  control  shows 
that  the  movements  become  gradually  more  complex,  more 
definitely  under  control,  more  fully  co-ordinated  and  inte- 
grated, thus  following  the  lines  of  evolutionary  develop- 
ment; in  other  words,  the  same  muscles  are  controlled  by 
these  three  different  levels.  For  example,  the  new-born 
babe  seems  to  use  just  the  same  muscle  to  grasp  the  pencil 
reflexly  as  does  the  child  of  six  months  when  he  grasps 
the  pencil  to  pull  it  towards  himself,  and  as  you  would  do 
should  you  grasp  your  pencil  voluntarily.  .  With  many  other 
movements  it  is  the  same;  that  is,  after  their  appearance 
in  reflex  use,  if  they  advance  beyond  this  stage,  they  can 
only  become  compounded  or  rather  complexed. 

By  investigations  carried  on  by  Mosso  (34,  p.  383),  it 
was  found  that  the  nerve  fibers  necessary  to  the  control 
of  movement  by  the  higher  centers  are  not  medullated  at 


40  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of    Writing. 

birth;  while  Flechsig  (16,  p.  123)  found  that  the  direction 
of  growth  of  medullation  was  not  from  the  highest  cere- 
bral centers  toward  the  periphery,  but  rather,  through  the 
mediation  of  the  medulla,  in  the  opposite  direction.  This 
naturally  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  the  development  of 
these  higher  centers  comes  through  the  movements  in  the 
periphery,  and  consequently  that  "we  move  voluntarily 
not  because  we  think,  but  rather  we  are  led  to  think  voli- 
tionally  because  we  have  moved  (39,  p.  107).  In  the  words 
of  Dr.  Mosso:  "In  man  the  brain  develops  later  than  in 
all  other  animals  because  his  muscles  also  develop  later" 
(34,  p.  383). 

Movement,  it  is  believed,  produces  development  of  nerv- 
ous substance.  An  experiment  showing  the  development 
of  the  center  from  the  periphery  was  tried  in  which  an 
idiot's  hand  was  trained.  The  experiment  was  carried  out 
to  determine  whether  the  cortical  centers  for  more  proxi- 
mal joints,  such  as  the  shoulder  in  contrast  to  the  elbow, 
tend  to  relatively  speedy  organization,  and  hence  be- 
come in  some  degree  a  thoroughfare  for  impulses  con- 
trolling more  distant  groups  (12,  p.  547).  The  teacher 
began  the  training  of  the  idiot's  hand  from  the  shoulder 
by  movements  which  starting  from  the  elevators  of  the 
arms  would  involve  successively  the  muscles  of  the  arm 
and  hand.  By  a  series  of  such  operations,  whose  willed 
or  obedient  starting  point  descended  gradually  from  the 
spine,  the  child  became  capable  of  moving  his  hand  and 
fingers,  first  by  imitation  and  later  for  simple  willed 
operations. 

Other  experiments  have  been  tried  to  show  that  the 
excitation  of  the  senses  and  impulses  to  movement  hasten 
the  development  of  the  nerves  that  are  implicated.  Held, 
Ambronn  and  others  tried  the  experiment  of  opening  one 
eye  of  a  new-born  kitten,  and  found  that  the  optical  fibers 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       41 

of  the  eye  stimulated  by  the  light  was  more  quickly  sur- 
rounded with  myelin  than  those  of  the  other.  In  some 
cases  this  caused  soreness  of  the  eyes  opened,  but  as  none 
of  the  animals  experimented  upon  were  allowed  to  live 
afterwards,  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any  meaningful  con- 
clusion as  to  what  would  have  been  the  permanent  result 
of  the  excitation  and  forced  development  upon  the  general 
health  of  the  eyes  opened  (34,  p.  384). 

In  the  case  of  the  new-born  child  the  movements  are 
nearly  all  fundamental;  reflex,  automatic,  instinctive,  and 
random.  After  a  while,  when  he  gets  to  be  perhaps  three 
months  old,  he  responds  to  sight,  sound,  etc.,  the  move- 
ments being  controlled  more  fully  by  the  centers  of  the 
middle  level.  By  the  time  he  is  a  year  old,  or  before,  he 
sometimes  acts  with  volition  and  seems  to  decide  what  he 
will  do.  Chronologically  movement  seems  to  advance 
from  the  fundamental  towards  the  accessory,  and  yet  the 
lowest  level  constantly  controls  many  actions  of  the  child. 
For  example,  the  child  does  not  need  to  think  of  how  to 
take  a  step  after  the  learning  process  is  over  and  has  been 
perfected  by  practice.  The  reason  is  that  the  accessory 
movements  used  in  walking  have  gradually  changed  from 
accessory  control  of  the  highest  level  to  that  of  the  middle 
and  toward  that  of  the  lowest,  consequently  many  of  the 
walking  movements  have  come  under  the  control  of  the 
spinal  cord.  In  the  same  way  the  movement  used  in 
writing  should  pass  from  the  control  of  the  highest  level 
to  that  of  the  lowest. 

"Devolution." — In  old  age  or  general  paralysis  the  higher 
centers  are  attacked  first,  and  a  person  is  not  able  to  exe- 
cute the  delicate,  finer  movements.  "As  old  age  increases 
and  disease  spreads  downward,  these  more  general,  more 
complex,  more  precise  movements  pass  away,  layer  by 
layer,  as  it  were,  going  from  the  accessory  to  the  funda- 
mental, from  the  peripheral  to  central,  from  the  product 


42  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

of  latest  evolution  to  those  of  oldest"  (39,  p.  108).  For 
example,  the  art  of  writing  is  lost  before  the  appreciable 
loss  of  the  fundamental  movements  of  the  hand. 

BRAIN  AREAS. — It  is  known  that  certain  of  the  cortical 
areas  are  functionally  connected  with  sense  organs  from 
which  they  receive  stimuli,  i.  e.,  there  is  a  region  or  area  in 
the  brain  receiving  auditory  impressions,  another  receiving 
visual  impressions,  an  area  for  the  reception  of  olfactory 
stimuli,  one  probably  concerned  with  the  receiving  of 
tactual,  thermal,  kinaesthetic  and  organic  stimuli.  Thus 
when  one  writes,  the  motor  cells  make  the  hand  move,  and 
the  sensory  area  sends  back  the  kinaesthetic  impressions 
to  the  brain.  There  is  reason  for  the  belief  that  the 
peripheral  sensory  neurones  are  in  connection  mainly 
with  the  opposite  side  of  the  cortex  from  which  they 
originate;  the  optic  nerve,  however,  is  a  curious  modifica- 
tion of  this  plan. 

A  great  group  of  cortical  cells  known  as  the  region  of 
Rolando  from  its  proximity  to  the  Rolando  fissure  is  recog- 
nized as  having  control  over  the  voluntary  muscles.  The 
Rolandic  region  governs  almost  all  the  important  move- 
ments of  the  body  which  are  executed  by  muscles  control- 
ling regions  for  which  the  skin  furnishes  the  sense 
organs,  i.  e.,  the  arms,  hands,  body,  legs  and  face. 

"Besides  this  there  are  other  large  areas  in  the  cortex 
which  are  not  in  immediate  control  of  muscles,  nor  do 
they  seem  to  represent  the  emergence  point  for  neurones 
in  connection  with  the  sense  organs"  (1,  p.  46).  Flechsig, 
the  most  careful  student  of  these,  has  named  them  asso- 
ciation centers.  They  serve  to  unite  the  several  sensory 
regions,  such  as  the  auditory  and  visual  areas,  with  one 
another  and  with  the  motor  region. 

There  is  another  extremely  important  connection  known 
as  the  corpus  callosum  made  up  of  cortical  neurones  and 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       43 

joining  the  two  hemispheres  of  the  brain.  Thus  it  is 
possible  for  a  cortical  nervous  impulse,  originating  in  the 
stimulation  of  some  sense  organ  like  the  ear,  to  pass  into 
other  cortical  regions,  as  that  of  vision,  and  thence  out 
through  the  Rolandic  zone  to  some  muscle.  This  is  what 
would  occur  if  a  person  were  told  to  write  John.  The 
person  would  hear  the  word,  think  how  the  word  looked, 
and  finally  make  the  movement  with  the  hand  to  write 
John  (1,  p.  47).  See  diagram  below,  which  is  reproduced 
from  James'  Psychology,  by  permission  of  Henry  Holt  & 
Company,  New  York. 


A— Auditory  center. 
V — Visual  center. 


W — Writing  center. 
E-  Speech  center. 


44  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

APHASIA. — -We  already  know  that  each  particular  form 
of  sensation  is  located  in  a  special  system.  It  has  been 
found  that  if  these  special  systems  are  destroyed,  all  traces 
of  the  corresponding  sensations  would  disappear,  and  all 
renewal  of  the  same  would  be  stopped.  Also  that  if  the 
connection  between  the  normal  stimulus  and  the  periphery 
of  such  a  system  is  destroyed,  then  physical  images  essen- 
tial for  the  renewal  of  the  sensation  are  impossible,  but 
the  psychical  images  stored  up  in  the  mind  persist.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  destroying  of  the  determinate  regions  of 
the  cortex,  which  are  the  culminating  points  of  these  spe- 
cial systems,  will  permit  of  a  renewal  of  the  stimulus  at  the 
periphery  of  such  a  system,  but  renders  impossible  the  for- 
mation of  psychical  images  essential  for  the  renewal  of  the 
sensation.  (33,  p.  661.) 

Images  are  of  two  kinds — concrete,  or  images  of  objects, 
and  symbolical  or  abstract,  or  verbal  images,  as  those  of 
language,  whether  spoken  or  written.  Pathology  demon- 
strates that  some  of  these  images  may  disappear,  while 
others  remain.  The  disappearance  may  concern  the  sensa- 
tions or  images  of  a  given  sense,  and  yet  allow  of  the  sub- 
sistence of  other  senses;  formation  choice  may  also  be 
made  between  the  more  or  less  complicated  orders  of  the 
different  images  or  representations  of  this  sense.  For  ex- 
ample, the  verbal  images  of  hearing  or  of  vision  may  be 
suppressed,  and  yet  the  images  of  objects  may  persist. 
All  the  psychical  images  may  be  suppressed  and  only  sen- 
sations remain,  or  the  psychical  manifestations  of  a  sense 
may  be  so  utterly  destroyed  that  nothing  remains. 

A  person  suffering  from  aphasia  has  not  lost  the  whole 
function  of  language,  but  only  one  of  the  factors  taking 
part  in  the  complex  process.  The  lesion  leading  to  aphasia 
presents  distinct  anatomical  and  functional  forms,  for 
example,  in  the  cortex  itself,  the  partial  systems  which  give 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.        45 

rise  to  verbal  images  (cortical  aphasias)  may  be  destroyed, 
or  the  communication  of  these  systems  with  each  other  or 
with  the  inferior  systems  receiving  the  sensations  or  for 
the  performance  of  movements  may  be  interrupted.  (33, 
p.  662).  "Even  in  the  brain  we  distinguish  between  sys- 
tems for  the  reception  and  organization  of  sensations  and 
those  for  the  performance  of  motor  verbal  function; 
whence,  according  to  the  seat  of  the  lesion  in  one  or  the 
other  system,  we  find  two  functionally  different  forms  of 
aphasia,  one  sensorial  and  the  other  motor."  (33,  p.  663.) 
Aphasia  led  psychologists  to  investigate  the  causes,  and 
in  so  doing  the  special  centers  were  discovered.  Motor 
aphasia  was  investigated  first.  Broca,  in  1861,  proved  that 
the  destruction  of  the  third  frontal  convolution  of  the  left 
hemisphere  lead  to  the  loss  of  articulate  speech;  the  motor 
memory  of  the  articulation  of  words  would  be  gone.  In 
1874  Wernicke  discovered  a  word  hearing  center  in  the 
rear  part  of  the  auditory  area.  A  new  form  of  aphasia  was 
discovered  by  him  and  called  sensorial  aphasia.  A  person 
so  affected  can  articulate  sounds  or  write,  but  his  words 
have  no  meaning  for  him.  "Sometimes  he  has  lost  his 
verbal  auditory  images  (word  deafness)  ;  sometimes  he 
has  lost  his  verbal  visual  images  (word  blindness),  and 
the  disturbance  of  the  function  of  language  is  rendered 
manifest  by  his  inability  to  read.  The  written  signs  have, 
for  him,  lost  their  symbolical  significance;  he  can  write, 
but  cannot  read  what  he  has  written;  he  can  speak  and 
answer  an  oral  question,  but  not  a  written  one."  (33,  p. 
664.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  alexia,  or  inability  to  read, 
does  not  involve  agraphia  or  inability  to  write.  Dr.  Bald- 
win says:  "In  these  cases  we  have  the  extreme  motor  type 
of  verbal  memory;  also  emphasized  by  Strieker:  persons 
who  remember  written  words  by  the  memory  of  the  sensa- 
tions involved  in  writing  them."  (3,  p.  98.) 


46  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

WRITING  CENTER.— Specialized  reading  and  writing 
centers  have  been  located.  The  reading  center  is  made  up 
of  specialized  cells  forming  part  of  the  language  center, 
and  in  right-handed  people  this  center  is  more  fully  de- 
veloped in  the  left  half  of  the  brain.  The  idea  of  a  separate 
graphic-motor  or  writing  center  was  first  put  forth,  in 
1881,  by  Exner  of  Vienna,  and  has  been  advocated  strongly 
by  such  educators  as  Mills  of  Philadelphia,  etc.,  and,  in 
fact,  is  generally  acknowledged  by  neurologists,  although 
Collins  and  others  disclaim  it  strongly.  It  is  located  in  the 
motor  area  just  in  front  of  the  fissure  of  Rolando,  and 
above  and  back  of  the  speech  area;  or,  in  other  words,  at 
the  base  of  the  left  second  frontal  convolution.  In  this 
area  Exner  believed  the  motor  memories  of  writing  were 
stored,  the  destruction  of  which  area  caused  agraphia. 

Collins  (10,  p.  62)  claims  that  internal  speech  is  de- 
pendent upon  a  revival  of  auditory,  visual  and  articulatory 
memories;  all  three  centers  contributing,  but  the  one  which 
is  most  highly  cultivated  is  revived  most  vividly.  The 
faculty  of  writing  is  developed,  like  that  of  articulate 
speech,  under  the  stress  of  the  impulse  of  imitation,  and 
the  co-ordination,  Collins  claims,  is  between  the  visual  cen- 
ter and  that  part  of  the  motor  cortex  from  which  impulses 
start  to  move  the  member  that  holds  the  pen,  whether  it  be 
the  hand  or  any  other  mobile  part  of  the  body.  These 
movements  of  writing  are  all  accompanied  by  the  reception 
of  kinsesthetic  impulses  that  go  to  the  somaesthetic  area 
of  the  brain,  and  the  renewal  of  these  memories  makes 
writing  seem  in  those  who  have  had  long  practice  almost 
like  an  automatic  act.  In  his  estimation  the  motor  act  of 
wielding  a  brush  in  painting  or  in  portraying  visual  sen- 
sory images,  whether  imaginary  or  real,  is  done  by  a  corti- 
cal area  quite  as  specialized  as  that  for  writing.  If  an 
idea  is  to  be  expressed  in  articulate  speech,  impulses  are 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       47 

sent  to  that  area  of  the  Rolandic  region  of  the  brain  in 
which  there  is  a  separate  allocation  for  the  movements  of 
respiration,  vocalization,  lingual  and  labial  action.  This 
area  is  adjacent  to  the  area  in  which  are  stored  sensory 
memories  of  articulatory  movements.  When  the  idea  is 
externalized  in  writing,  the  genesis  of  the  symbol  is  exactly 
analogous  to  that  of  articulate  speech.  The  spoken  word 
and  the  written  word  are  both  the  result  of  internal  lan- 
guage, as  nearly  everyone  cannot  help  but  be  cognizant  of 
the  words  ringing  within  while  writing.  They  both  require 
absolute  integrity  of  the  zone  of  language,  the  only  differ- 
ence being  that  in  the  first  instance  the  finished  product  is 
sent  to  the  cortical  area,  center  of  the  articulo-vocal  mus- 
culature, and  in  the  other  to  the  Rolandic  allocation  of  a 
much  less  complex  motor  mechanism,  namely,  to  the  corti- 
cal center  of  the  member  that  holds  the  pen,  whatever 
mobile  part  of  the  body  that  may  be.  Collins  states  that 
practice  does  not  contribute  to  the  development  of  a  special 
center  and  that  the  scrivener  does  not  possess  a  special 
center  in  which  are  located  the  graphic  motor  memories 
any  more  than  does  the  telegrapher  a  telegraphic  center, 
or  the  typewriter  a  typewriting  center,  or  the  pianist  a 
special  center  in  which  are  represented  the  complex  move- 
ments of  the  fingers. 

Collins  attempts  to  prove  that  Exner's  interpretations 
of  the  cases  of  aphasia  examined  were  wrong,  but  it  must 
be  remembered  that  Collins  undoubtedly  is  a  special 
pleader  for  his  own  belief.  Notwithstanding,  he  brings 
forth  some  good  evidence  and  gives  about  all  the  proof 
available  against  a  writing  center.  For  instance,  if  there 
is  a  specialized  writing  center  in  the  brain  in  which  are 
stored  graphic  images  of  words,  then  the  destruction  of 
this  center  must  entail  complete  agraphia  for  both  hands 
and  any  other  part  of  the  body  capable  of  holding  a  pen. 


48  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of    Writing. 

If  this  is  not  so,  then  ambidextrous  persons  must  have  a 
separate  graphic  motor  center  on  each  side  of  the  brain. 
This  does  not  seem  to  be  in  accordance  with  what  we  know 
definitely  of  the  cortical  localization  of  speech  functions 
(10,  p.  143).  Collins  also  claims  that  no  ideal  case  to  prove 
that  there  is  a  graphic  motor  center  has  ever  been  found. 

According  to  the  theory  of  Charcot,  the  articulatory 
motor  centers  and  the  graphic  motor  centers  are  loci  in 
which  are  stored  the  motor  memories  of  articulation  and 
the  motor  memories  that  guide  the  hand  in  writing.  He 
fixed  the  one  for  graphic  motor  images  in  the  foot  of  the 
second  frontal  convolution,  and  that  for  articulatory  motor 
images  in  the  foot  of  the  third  frontal.  Charcot  claimed 
that  a  lesion  that  destroys  the  third  frontal  does  not  entail 
agraphia.  The  coexistence  of  motor  agraphia  with  motor 
aphasia,  he  claimed,  was  not  necessary,  and  since  then  his 
pupils,  Marie,  Pitres,  Grasset,  Brissand  and  others  claim 
the  same  and  contend  that  there  are  cases  of  pure  motor 
agraphia  without  aphasia. 

Marie  (29,  p.  241)  does  not  believe  that  the  third  left 
frontal  convolution  of  the  brain  plays  any  part  in  the  func- 
tion of  language.  Prof.  Pierre  Marie,  a  la  Faculte  de 
Medicine  de  Paris,  has  studied  the  subject  of  aphasia,  first 
hand,  for  over  ten  years,  and  if  a  reader  wishes  to  know 
more  of  his  investigations,  as  well  as  what  has  been  done 
in  the  working  out  of  the  subject  of  aphasia  by  others,  an 
article  by  Fernand  Bernheim  (Ancien  interne  des  hopitaux 
de  Paris),  entitled  "Evolution  of  the  Problem  of  the 
Aphasias,"  published  in  "L'  Annee  Psychologique,"  Vol.  13, 
1907,  XXI,  p.  344,  should  be  read. 

As  far  as  education  is  concerned,  it  matters  little  whether 
or  not  a  writing  center  can  be  accurately  located,  for  if 
there  is  no  such  center,  then  associations  are  made  with  the 
motor  area,  but  we  will  assume  that  such  a  center  has  been 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       49 

established  as  it  is  most  generally  accepted  by  neurologists. 
The  influence  resulting  from  heredity  affects  the  reading 
and  writing  centers  but  little,  as  they  are  of  such  com- 
paratively recent  origin  as  contrasted  with  the  auditory 
and  visual  areas;  hence  the  education  of  these  areas  may  be 
controlled  to  a  large  extent  by  practice. 

COMPLEXITY  OF  THE  WRITING  MOVEMENT.— The 
act  of  writing  is  a  very  complex  muscular  movement  in- 
volving the  use  of  some  five  hundred  or  more  muscles  alto- 
gether, some  authorities  state.  Passing  by,  for  the  present, 
the  origin  of  writing,  and  the  close  analysis  and  memory 
for  form  involved  in  the  learning  process,  we  will  here  con- 
sider the  complexity  of  the  muscular  act. 

There  is  the  movement  across  the  page,  bringing  into 
play  the  large  muscles  of  the  arm  and  movement  in  the 
shoulder-joint  and  elbow.  These  lateral  movements  across 
the  paper  are  different  in  character  and  in  the  muscles 
employed  from  the  rotary  movements  used  in  forming  the 
letters,  i.  e.,  the  finer  finger  movements,  bringing  into  play 
the  smaller  muscles,  usually  form  the  pen-strokes  (26, 
p.  187).  These  different  factors  involved  in  the  writing 
movement  must  work  in  perfect  harmony  in  order  to  be 
able  to  do  the  most  effective  work;  that  is,  the  arm  muscles 
must  contract  at  just  the  right  moment  to  carry  the  hand 
along  and  yet  not  interfere  with  the  finer  movements. 
This  difficult  co-ordination  of  muscles  can  only  be  brought 
about  by  long  and  correct  practice  as  will  be  acknowledged 
if  one  only  observes  the  halting,  shifting  movements  of 
one  just  learning  to  write. 

DIFFUSION. — Developed  writing  movements  depend  on 
the  existence  of  a  group  of  brain  cells  which  are  intercon- 
nected and  interrelated  in  a  very  complex  manner.  This 
growth  of  interconnections  between  the  cells  is  the  result 
of  a  process  requiring  time  and  practice.  When  a  young 


50  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing. 

child  begins  to  learn  to  write,  each  brain  cell  acts  in  a 
large  measure  apart  from  every  other  brain  cell,  and  there 
is  no  organized  co-operation  or  muscular  co-ordination. 
The  child's  unorganized  movements  are  called  diffuse 
movements,  that  is,  they  are  untrained  movements  which 
are  too  much  spread  out.  The  real  seat  of  diffusion  is  not 
in  the  muscles,  but  in  the  nervous  system,  where  the  im- 
pulse has  been  spread  out  or  diffused  rather  than  carried 
along  definite  fixed  channels.  This  diffusion  of  impulses 
in  the  child's  brain  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  brain  mass 
itself  is  unorganized,  the  regular  lines  of  connection  neces- 
sary for  co-ordination  have  not  been  laid  out,  hence  the 
impulse  is  at  liberty  to  wander  around,  as  it  were,  and 
shoot  out  in  a  very  irregular  and  unco-ordinated  fashion. 
This  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  the  child's  brain  needs 
organization,  and  it  is  the  study  of  the  experiments 
performed  to  determine  the  development  of  voluntary 
movement  that  we  will  now  consider. 

(2)   PSYCHO-PHYSICAL  ANALYSIS. 

Expriments  in  Voluntary  Movement  Bearing  on  the  Pedagogy  of 

Writing. 

It  is  now  our  purpose  to  review  briefly  a  few  studies 
made  upon  children  and  adults  by  psycho-physical  methods 
to  determine  the  rapidity,  accuracy,  strength  and  maturity, 
and  fluctuating  periods  in  the  development  of  voluntary 
movements,  especially  those  of  the  hand;  together  with  a 
treatment  of  the  experiments  bearing  on  the  specialized 
form  of  voluntary  movement,  namely  writing,  taking  up 
such  studies  as  bear  on  practice  and  habit,  movements  in 
writing,  cross  education,  the  relation  of  accuracy  in  hand- 
writing to  school  intelligence  and  sex. 

RAPIDITY  OF  MOVEMENT. 

Dr.  W.  L.  Bryan  (6,  Development  of  Voluntary  Motor 
Ability),  in  Worcester,  and  Dr.  Gilbert  (19,  v.  1),  at  Yale 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       51 

and  Iowa  (19,  v.  1),  have  experimented  upon  the  degree 
of  rapidity  with  which  children  of  different  ages  were  able 
to  tap  an  electric  key  which  automatically  recorded  results. 
Dr.  Bryan  tested  789  children,  ranging  in  age  from  five 
to  sixteen.  By  means  of  the  electric  key,  he  tested  four 
sets  of  arm  muscles,  shoulder,  elbow,  wrist,  and  metacarpo- 
phalangeal  finger-joints.  In  order  to  secure  the  separation 
of  these  sets  of  muscles,  the  arm  of  the  subject  was 
clamped  to  allow  movement  only  of  the  specific  set  of 
muscles.  The  test  was  to  discover  the  greatest  possible 
number  of  taps  the  subject  could  execute  in  five  seconds. 
The  following  tables  for  boys  and  girls  give  the  arith- 
metical means  of  the  test  (right  arm)  of  all  the  boys  and 
girls  of  a  given  age. 

TABLE    A.— BOYS. 

Age 5        6         7         8        9       10       11       12       13       14       15       16 

No... 14       26       35       33       43       37       36       33       34       41       32       26 

Finder 19.6  19.5  21.0  23.1  24.4  25.2  27.0  29.3  28.7  31.5  31.6  33.9 

Wrist 20.1  23.0  23.7  26.3  27.8  28.5  30.3  31.6  32.3  33.0  34.2  35.9 

Elbow 22.7  23.5  24.2  26.1  28.2  28.1  29.3  29.9  31.0  32.7  31.5  32.7 

Shoulder 18.4  19.8  20.5  22.3  24.1  22.6  24.1  25.0  25.5  27.2  26.3  28.7 

TABLE    B.— GIRLS. 

Age 6         7         8         9        10       11       12       13       14       15       16 

No 28       32       33       43       37       36       33       34       41       32       26 

Finger 19.8  20.7  22.2  24.0  25.8  27.1  28.2  30.3  29.5  29.1  31.3 

Wrist 21.6  23.1  24.3  25.5  28.5  30.4  31.6  33.2  30.5  30.9  33.3 

Elbow 22.7  23.2  24.4  25.4  27.5  28.6  29.4  30.5  28.8  29.3  30.1 

Shoulder 19.9  20.2  21.9  22.7  22.6  24.9  25.7  27.5  26.6  26.0  27.9 

Dr.  Gilbert  has  made  two  studies  upon  rapidity  of  tap- 
ping, one  upon  New  Haven  children  and  the  other  upon 
Iowa  children.  The  elbow,  in  his  tests,  was  held  free  from 
the  table  and  the  arm  was  in  no  way  clamped.  The  subject 
tapped  with  the  finger,  but  the  movement  must  be  inter- 
preted largely  as  that  of  a  wrist  movement.  The  tests 
were  made  on  approximately  fifty  children  of  each  sex, 
and  each  age  from  six  to  seventeen  years.  The  number 
of  taps  in  five  seconds  for  both  sexes  is  shown  in  the  fol- 
lowing table: 


52  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

TABLE    B. 

Age...      6         7         8         9        10       11       12       13       14       15       16       17       18       19 

N.  H.  B.  21.0  22.8  24.9  25.8  27.7  29.7  30.3  29.8  31.2  31.3  33.0  35.0 

I.  B 22.1  23.3  25.8  27.1  28.3  2S.1  30.1  31.1  32.4  34.0  34.0  34.4    36.0    36.7 

N.  H.  G.  19.7  21.2  23.9  25.0  26.9  27.8  29.6  28.1  28.0  29.8  31.8  31.5 

I.  G 22.3  24.2  26.0  26.7  26.2  28.0  29.3  29.5  29.4  31.3  32.2  33.8    34.3    35.3 

Conclusions:  The  rapidity  of  motor  ability  of  the  hand 
and  arm,  for  tapping  exercises,  increases,  on  the  whole, 
with  age  and  does  not  reach  maturity  until  the  adolescent 
period.  This  fact  is  demonstrated  by  both  of  the  studies 
from  which  the  tables  given  were  taken.  From  the  sixth 
year  the  rate  increases  through  the  pubescent  period,  with 
some  few  fluctuations.  To  show  how  immature  this  move- 
ment is  at  the  age  of  entering  school,  the  following  table 
of  percentages  is  given,  assuming  the  rate  of  tapping  at 
sixteen  years  as  100  per  cent. 

TABLE  c. 

Per  cent,  of  16-year  Per  cent,  of  16-year 

ability  possessed  ability  acquired  between 

at  6  years  of  age.  6  and  16  years. 

(Bryan.)                                       Boys.              Girls.  Boys.              Girls. 

Finger 57                     63  43                     37 

Wrist 64                     65  36                     35 

Elbow 72                     75  28                     25 

Shoulder 69                     71  31                     29 

(Gilbert.) 

Hand  (N.  H.) 64                     62  36                     38 

Hand  (Iowa) 65                    69  35                    31 

Because  the  subjects  in  Dr.  Gilbert's  tests  held  the  arm 
entirely  free,  while  the  arm  was  clamped  in  those  of  Dr. 
Bryan's,  it  seems  hardly  fair  to  directly  compare  the  two 
tests,  as  the  movements  in  the  first-mentioned  test  con- 
sisted probably  of  all  four  of  the  movements  studied  by 
Dr.  Bryan. 

The  tables  representing  the  results  of  the  tests  show 
that  girls  mature  earlier  than  boys  in  rapidity  of  arm  and 
hand  movements.  With  the  exception  of  one  test,  the 
girls  in  Table  C  have  at  the  age  of  six  reached  a  larger 
percentage  of  their  16-year  ability  than  the  boys.  It  also 
shows  that  girls  at  the  age  of  thirteen  have  practically 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       53 

reached  maturity,  and  that  after  that  age  the  rate  in  some 
cases  actually  decreases.  Boys  seem  to  increase  their  abil- 
ity very  materially  until  after  the  age  of  fifteen.  Bryan's 
test  gives  the  following  results  for  girls  of  thirteen  years 
of  age:  97  per  cent,  in  the  finger  test,  99  per  cent,  in  the 
wrist  test,  101  per  cent,  in  the  elbow  test,  and  98.2  per  cent, 
in  the  shoulder  test. 

Another  result  of  the  tests  was  that  the  rapidity  of  move- 
ment in  tapping  in  the  hand  and  arm  tends  to  be  the  great- 
est when  the  rate  of  growth  in  height  and  weight  is  least. 
The  process  of  anabolism  in  adding  new  tissues  seems  to 
interfere  with  the  dexterity  of  movement.  In  the  data  of 
Bryan,  as  shown  in  the  table  given  below,  the  tenth  and 
fifteenth  years  are  the  highest  in  growth  rate,  but  lowest 
in  tapping  ability.  As  shown  by  the  table,  the  years  of 
retarded  tapping  ability  in  the  New  Haven  study  are  the 
ninth,  fifteenth  and  seventeenth,  while  the  years  of  accel- 
erated growth  rate  are  the  ninth,  eleventh,  thirteenth  and 
fifteenth. 

The  rate  of  improvement  fluctuates  or  proceeds  by 
marked  rhythmical  vibrations,  sometimes  very  rapid,  again 
slow,  and  in  some  years  a  decrease  is  shown  from  the  rate 
of  the  previous  year.  The  tables  of  both  Bryan  and  Gil- 
bert show  four  periods  of  acceleration  and  four  of  retarda- 
tion in  rate  between  the  years  6  and  18,  though  for  some 
years  there  is  a  slight  divergence  from  this  general  state- 
ment. The  years  of  highest  rates  for  boys  are  as  follows: 

Worcester  .  .  .8th  and  9th   1 1th  14th  16th 

New  Haven.  .8th  lOthandllth   14th  16th 

Iowa 8th  12th  14th  and  15th   18th 

The  years  of  lowest  rate  are  as  follows: 

Worcester 10th  13th  15th 

New  Haven 9th  13th  15th 

Iowa.,  ..llth  13th  16th 


54  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

Another  conclusion  of  importance  is  that  the  more  cen- 
tral or  fundamental  movements  tend  to  earlier  maturity 
than  the  less  central  or  less  fundamental  movements.  In 
table  D  is  shown  the  relative  immaturity  of  the  finger 
movement.  Dr.  Bryan's  tests  offer  evidence  upon  this 
point,  yet  no  one  of  the  movements  in  a  strict  sense,  except 
that  of  the  finger,  can  be  considered  exclusivly  accessory 
or  fundamental.  As  will  be  noticed  the  finger  has  acquired 
in  both  boys  and  girls  of  six  a  smaller  percentage  of  its 
ability  at  6  years  of  age  than  any  of  the  other  parts; 
the  wrist  also  shows  less  development  than  the  elbow  and 
shoulder.  In  the  following  table  the  rhythms  in  the 
growth  in  power  are  shown.  Each  retardation  with  its 
succeeding  acceleration  is  thought  of  as  a  period,  i.  e.,  in 
the  case  of  the  boys  there  are  four  periods:  6  to  9,  9  to  12, 
12  to  14,  14  to  16;  in  the  case  of  the  girls,  three  periods: 
6  to  10,  10  to  13,  13  to  16.  In  this  the  tapping  ability  at 
16  years  is  taken  as  100  per  cent.,  and  the  figures  in  the 
columns  indicate  the  percentage  of  this  16-year  ability 
added  in  each  of  these  respective  rhythms. 

TABLE    D. 
GIRLS'   RIGHT    ARM. 

Age  :    Up  to  6  years.  6-10.  10-13.  13-16.  Total  at  16. 

Fingers 63                20  14                3                100 

Wrist 65                  21  14                  0                  100 

Elbow 75                  15  10                  0                  100 

Shoulder 71                 10  18                 1                 100 

BOYS'   RIGHT    ARM. 

Age  :    Up  to  6  years.  69.  9-12.  12-14.  14-16.  Total  at  16. 

Fingei-s 66  14  14  7  7                  100 

Wrist 64  13  11  4  8                  100 

Elbow 72  14  5  9  0                  100 

Sboulder 69  15  7  4  5                 100 

These  tables  show  (1)  that  the  elbow  and  shoulder  move- 
ments in  both  boys  and  girls  have  reached  a  larger  per 
cent,  of  their  mature  power  than  the  finger  and  wrist 
movements,  the  finger  being  without  doubt  more  of  an 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       55 

accessory  movement  and  of  later  evolutionary  develop- 
ment; (2)  that  after  9  or  10  years  of  age  the  finger  move- 
ment acquires  a  large  per  cent,  of  its  ability,  28  per  cent, 
in  the  boys  and  17.5  per  cent,  in  the  girls.  In  another 
series  of  tests  Dr.  Bryan  reached  the  same  conclusion, 
namely,  that  the  shoulder  grows  more  slowly,  the  elbow 
slightly  faster,  and  the  wrist  and  fingers  very  much  more 
rapidly.  The  rate  of  tapping  for  the  wrist  and  fingers 
does  not  gain  much  upon  the  shoulder  until  the  eleventh 
year,  and  then  the  finger  rate,  relatively,  springs  forward 
with  much  acceleration.  The  probable  explanation  is  that 
the  shoulder,  as  a  central  movement,  has  passed  the  period 
of  extreme  nascency  very  early,  the  elbow  follows,  the 
gain  of  the  wrist  is  still  later,  and  the  period  of  nascency 
for  the  fingers  is  surely  not  until  after  the  tenth  year,  and 
its  real  culmination  in  power  is  probably  not  reached  until 
the  sixteenth  year. 

Bryan  found  that  the  mean  rate  of  boys  slightly  exceeds 
that  of  girls  at  all  ages  except  where  retardation  of  growth 
in  boys  coincides  with  acceleration  of  growth  in  girls.  It 
might  also  be  mentioned  in  passing  that  there  is  less 
bilateral  asymmetry  of  development  in  the  rate  ability  of 
boys  than  in  that  of  girls,  and  that  boys  develop  more 
rapidly  on  the  right  side.  The  left-handed  persons  exam- 
ined showed  decidedly  less  mean  difference  between  the 
right  and  left  sides,  and  less  bilateral  asymmetry  than  did 
right-handed  persons. 

In  Gilbert's  tests  the  age  of  fatigue  was  found  to  be 
about  eight.  Girls  tired  more  easily  at  13  than  12,  and 
boys  more  quickly  throughout;  but  the  boys  tapped  faster, 
the  average  number  of  times  in  five  seconds  being  29.4, 
while  the  average  for  girls  was  only  26.9. 

Gilbert  also  found  out  that  all  children  of  all  grades 
react  in  about  the  same  length  of  time  just  before  those 


56  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

ages  in  which  changes  of  growth  manifest  themselves,  viz., 
11  and  16.  The  average  reaction  time  for  all  ages  for 
bright  children  was  20.7  hundredths  of  a  second;  for  those 
of  average  ability  it  was  21.3;  for  dull  children  22.4.  Thus 
it  will  be  seen  that  bright  children  react  much  more  quickly 
than  dull  children,  and  we  judge  of  a  child's  mental  ability 
by  the  quickness  with  which  it  is  able  to  act. 

Lombard  (28,  v.  II)  experimented  on  men  in  lifting 
weights,  mostly  by  means  of  the  flexor  muscles  of  the 
second  finger,  and  an  attached  pen  recorded  the  results. 
The  hand  and  arm  were  securely  fixed  on  a  convenient 
rest.  After  110  seconds  of  continuous  work  the  subject 
could  hardly  lift  the  weight,  but  shortly  began  to  recover, 
and  during  the  next  half  of  a  minute  each  of  the  succeed- 
ing contractions  was  higher  than  the  one  which  had  pre- 
ceded it.  Fatigue  then  again  began  to  manifest  itself  and 
the  contractions  became  smaller.  During  12  minutes  the 
ability  to  voluntarily  contract  the  muscles  with  sufficient 
strength  to  raise  the  weight  decreased  and  recovered  five 
times,  due  probably  to  functional  changes  in  the  central 
nervous  system.  These  periods  were  often  almost  rhythm- 
ical, but  displayed  many  variations.  On  the  relation  of 
fatigue  to  the  rate  of  rapidity  of  voluntary  movement 
Bryan  has  this  statement:  "The  maximum  rate  of  rhythm- 
ically repeated  voluntary  movement  in  a  given  individual 
is  sufficient  in  amount  and  in  constancy  to  indicate  local 
and  general  subjective  conditions,  as  excitement,  general 
and  local  fatigue,  local  cold,  and  the  improvement  with 
age.  The  change  of  rate  with  extreme  fatigue  is  large  in 
comparison  with  the  mean  rate  of  improvement  with  age" 
(6,  p.  174). 

ACCURACY  OF  VOLUNTARY  MOVEMENT. 

We  have  as  yet  no  great  amount  of  detailed  study  into 
the  normal  relations  of  voluntary  movement  to  conscious- 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       57 

ness.  The  topic  has  nearly  always  been  treated  from  the 
standpoint  of  perception  of  movement.  It  must  be  kept 
in  mind  that  movement  enters  consciousness  not  only  as 
perceived,  but  as  intended.  Conscious  life  is  built  up  on 
the  basis  of  the  reflex  arc;  hence  the  efferent  portion  as 
well  as  the  afferent  should  be  studied.  Movement  begins 
as  early  in  life  and  as  far  down  in  life  as  any  sensation; 
the  development  of  voluntary  acts  is  from  the  lower  to 
the  higher. 

Woodworth's  experiments  (44,  v.  3),  carried  on  in  the 
laboratory  of  Columbia  University  during  the  years  1898- 
99  take  up  the  relation  of  incoming  and  outgoing  currents 
in  normal  individuals,  and  also  the  relative  accuracy  of 
the  movement  under  the  control  of  different  senses.  It  is 
very  important  to  investigate  the  accuracy  of  movement 
since  it  is  accuracy  that  makes  all  movement  useful  and 
purposeful.  "Movement  must  have  a  particular  direction, 
a  definite  extent  or  goal,  a  definite  force,  a  definite  dura- 
tion, a  definite  relation  to  other  movements,  contempo- 
raneous, preceding  and  following"  (44,  p.  4). 

Tests. — A  kymograph  carrying  a  continuous  roll  of  paper 
24  centimeters  wide,  at  a  rate  of  1-5  mm.  per  second,  was 
rotated  on  a  horizontal  axis.  On  the  drum  lines  were 
ruled,  each  to  be  the  exact  length  of  the  one  preceding. 
The  experiment  was  varied  in  several  ways.  Sometimes 
the  normal  was  a  seen  line  to  be  copied,  time  after  time, 
by  the  subject;  while  at  other  times  the  line  was  repro- 
duced from  memory.  Sometimes  a  line  was  previously 
drawn  on  the  moving  paper,  at  right  angles  to  the  direc- 
tion of  the  movement,  and  the  movements  were  required 
to  terminate  just  on  that  line.  The  subject  was  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  he  must  make  the  present  line  equal  to 
that  immediately  preceding,  the  width  of  the  slit  on  the 
drum  being  so  adjusted  that  the  subject  saw  the  line  he 
had  just  made. 


58  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

Conclusion. — The  relation  of  the  accuracy  of  a  move- 
ment to  its  speed  is  shown  in  Fig.  2  below  (44,  p.  29). 


ERROR 

•mm. 
4- 


20   40    60    60   100   120   140   160   160  200 

FIG.  2. 

In  a  general  way  the  movement  loses  accuracy  as  the 
speed  is  increased,  but  it  is  not  true  that  equal  increments 
of  speed  produce  equal  increments  of  error,  for  the  line 
of  ascent  in  the  diagram  is  steeper  in  the  middle  portion 
than  at  either  end.  It  will  be  noticed  that  no  perceptible  in- 
crease in  error  accompanies  the  increase  of  speed  at  either 
end.  For  instance,  movements  at  40  per  minute,  intervals 
of  1.5  seconds,  are  on  the  whole  quite  as  accurate  as  move- 
ments at  20,  and  movements  at  140,  160,  180  and  200  are 
all  about  equally  accurate.  By  way  of  a  general  explana- 
tion it  may  be  said  that  an  interval  of  1.5  seconds  allows 
time  for  all  the  finer  adjustments  at  the  end  of  a  move- 
ment that  can  be  done  in  an  interval  of  3  seconds.  There- 
fore there  is  a  lower  limit  beyond  which  decrease  in  speed 
does  not  conduce  to  greater  accuracy.  In  the  same  way, 
at  the  upper  end  there  is  a  limit  beyond  which  increase  in 
speed  does  not  produce  much  further  inaccuracy.,  The 
explanation  of  this  seems  to  be  that  beyond  a  speed  of 
140  to  160  movements  per  minute  it  is  no  longer  possible 
to  control  the  movements  separately,  hence  much  has  to 
be  left  to  the  automatic  uniformity  of  the  hand's  move- 
ments, and  this  does  not  seem  to  diminish  as  the  speed 
increases. 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       59 

The  results  of  the  muscle  sense  test  is  shown  in  Fig.  3. 
ERROR 

•Ynm. 
6- 

4- 


20        40 


60 


8O 


ICO       120        140       160       1  60      200 
no.  3. 

This  shows  the  relation  when  the  eyes  are  closed,  and 
also  when  the  movement  is  careless  or  automatic.  The 
automatic  movement  gains  slightly  in  uniformity  as  the 
speed  increases,  while  the  studied  movements  made  with 
eyes  closed  are  almost  equally  accurate  (or  inaccurate) 
throughout.  The  correlation  between  accuracy  and  speed 
is  much  slighter  than  when  the  eyes  are  used. 

Concerning  the  results  obtained  from  the  three  mov- 
ments  it  may  be  said  that  the  one  governed  by  the  eye 
was  much  more  accurate  at  low  speed,  the  one  made  with 
the  eyes  shut,  though  less  accurate  than  the  first,  is  still 
decidedly  better  than  the  careless  movement.  This  was 
found  to  be  true  at  low  speed,  and  is  less  and  less  the  case 
as  the  speed  is  increased.  We  might  say  in  other  words 
that  at  a  high  rate  of  speed  the  accuracy  contributed  by 
voluntary  attention,  using  either  the  muscle  (joint)  sense 
or  the  eyes,  amounts  to  zero,  and  that  when  the  speed  is 
decreased,  the  accuracy  due  to  visual  control  is  greatly 
increased,  but  not  that  due  to  the  muscle  sense. 

INITIAL  ADJUSTMENT  AND  CURRENT  CONTROL.— 
The  initial  adjustment  for  any  movement  is  complex;  it 
includes  the  innervataion  of  different  muscles  one  after 


60  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

another.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  co-ordination 
adapted  to  produce  a  straight  line  is  probably  more  com- 
plex than  that  to  produce  certain  curves.  The  first  impulse 
includes  also  a  command  to  stop  after  a  certain  distance; 
these  later  effects  of  the  initial  impulse  are  probably  reflex 
in  some  degree  at  least.  The  proper  continuation  of  a 
movement  which  has  been  started  seems  to  be  dependent 
on  the  preservation  of  the  sensibilities  of  the  arm  making 
the  movement,  and  yet  the  first  impulse  contains  in  some 
way  the  entire  movement.  A  graphic  demonstration  of 
the  later  adjustment  is  not  easy,  but  Woodworth  (44, 
p.  55),  by  means  of  a  rapidly  rotating  kymograph  obtained 
a  curve  of  the  speed  of  the  movement — similar  to  the 
curve  of  muscular  contraction — and  any  little  additions 
to  the  movement  could  be  detected. 

Conclusions. — The  accuracy  of  the  original  impulse  is 
slight  compared  with  that  added  by  the  later  adjustment, 
when  the  speed  is  low  and  the  eyes  are  used;  otherwise 
almost  as  great.  In  other  words,  in  the  situations  which 
permit  great  accuracy,  that  accuracy  is  due  mostly,  not  to 
the  initial  adjustment  of  the  movement  as  a  whole,  but 
to  the  current  control,  consisting  of  finer  adjustments. 
Woodworth  thinks  that  in  addition  to  the  inaccuracy  of 
perception  and  inaccuracy  due  to  the  failure  of  the  move- 
ment to  obey  our  intention,  there  is  also  an  inaccuracy  in 
the  intention  itself,  or  in  the  process  of  adjusting  the 
movement  to  the  perception  (44,  p.  71). 

SENSORY  BASIS  FOR  CONTROL  OF  MOVEMENT.— 
Woodworth  (44,  p.  71),  endeavored  to  find  what  sensations 
are  relied  on  for  the  government  of  the  extent  of  a  move- 
ment. Among  other  tests  he  tried  one  in  which  the  sub- 
ject wrote  with  eyes  closed,  and  from  this  the  following 
conclusions  were  drawn:  (1)  at  the  ordinary  rate  of  speed 
the  writing  of  a  single  letter  or  a  short  word  can  be  done 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       61 

as  well  with  the  eyes  closed  as  with  them  open;  (2)  extreme 
slowness  is  a  disadvantage  when  the  eyes  are  not  used;  (3) 
if  several  words  are  written  with  the  eyes  closed,  the  align- 
ment is  lost  or  some  other  constant  error  makes  itself  evi- 
dent. The  conclusion  he  reached  from  observing  people 
write  with  the  eyes  open  is  that  when  the  speed  is  low 
enough  to  permit  of  fine  secondary  adjustments,  the  eyes 
assist  greatly  in  forming  the  letters  just  right. 

If  we  introspect  our  act  of  writing  we  shall  find  that  we 
never  look  at  the  movements  of  our  fingers,  but  seemingly 
at  the  letters  just  written,  and  yet  if  we  watch  some  one 
else  write,  we  will  find  that  the  eyes  move  but  little  and  do 
not  follow  the  form  of  each  letter,  but  seem  to  keep  track 
in  general  of  where  he  is,  to  preserve  the  alignment  and 
spacing,  to  keep  an  equality  in  the  letters,  and  to  avoid 
losing  his  way  when  in  the  midst  of  a  word  and  so  mis- 
spell it.  Hence  we  conclude,  says  Woodworth,  that  in 
forming  the  letters  we  come  to  depend  mostly  on  the 
muscular  and  tactile  sensibility. 

Downey,  in  experimenting  in  the  Psychological  Labora- 
tory of  Chicago  University  to  determine  the  control  pro- 
cesses in  modified  handwriting  attempted  to  throw  into 
relief  these  control  processes  by  eliminating  or  distracting 
some  particular  control,  as,  for  example,  having  the  subject 
write  blindfolded  to  eliminate  as  much  of  the  visual  control 
as  possible.  Among  other  results  she  found  (1)  no  evi- 
dence of  a  voluntary  act  of  writing  without  a  sensory  cue 
of  some  sort,  (2)  throughout  the  whole  series  of  experi- 
ments the  report  coming  from  the  writing  in  terms  either 
of  kinaesthetic  or  visual  sensations  and  images  proved  to 
have  a  highly  important  function  as  a  part  of  the  writing 
cue  (13,  p.  142). 

In  considering  the  results  of  these  two  experiments  car- 
ried on  by  Woodworth  and  Downey  one  must  remember 


62  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

that  the  subjects  were  adults,  and  the  conclusions  are  based 
on  the  results  obtained  from  people  with  well  established 
habits  of  writing.  In  the  case  of  adults  in  whom  the 
writing  habit  is  fully  developed,  the  utility  of  the  visual 
image  may  be  considered  as  trifling,  but  when  the  function 
of  the  visual  factor  in  writing  is  considered  genetically, 
or  where  new  co-ordinations  are  attempted  by  the  young 
child,  its  value  and  use  is  obvious  enough.  It  is  said  that 
adult  introspection  rarely  reveals  an  anticipatory  visual 
verbal  image,  and  there  is  a  tendency  among  psychological 
investigators  to  minimize  the  value  of  the  visual  percep- 
tion of  the  result  of  the  writing  movement  to  the  fact 
brought  out  by  Woodworth,  namely,  that  it  is  directive 
in  the  matter  of  spacing  and  alignment,  etc.  Yet  as  Baw- 
den  states:  "It  is  practically  impossible  to  determine  with 
experimental  accuracy  the  degree  to  which  the  kinaesthetic 
is  helped  out  by  the  visual  imagery  in  writing"  (2,  p.  390). 
It  is  true  that  the  hand-kinaesthetic  process  is  a  necessary 
accompaniment  of  writing  as  an  act,  but  not  necessarily 
of  the  writing-consciousness;  for  there  is  a  difference 
between  the  writing  movement  which  might  be  a  purely 
physiological  event  and  the  consciousness  of  that  move- 
ment. This  difference  may  be  either  in  the  form  of  an 
image  of  anticipation  or  of  a  sensational  report  of  the 
movement  as  achieved,  either  of  which  might  fail  to  assume 
kineesthetic  terms.  A  sensory  kinaesthetic  report  on  the 
movement  as  it  proceeds  is  usually  present,  although  it 
varies  in  different  individuals  and  has  a  different  value  for 
the  same  individual  under  different  conditions.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  as  a  conscious  control  process  this  kinaesthetic 
report  has  great  utility,  probably  functioning  in  the  usual 
course  of  writing  as  a  corrective  but  also  at  times  as  an 
initiative  process  as  well. 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       63 

Woodworth  thinks  that  the  muscle  sense  is  disregarded 
in  judging  the  extent  of  a  movement  when  the  eyes  are 
used  (44,  p.  76).  The  eye  tells  us  nothing  about  the  co- 
ordination of  the  muscles,  and  for  the  control  of  the  move- 
ment in  that  respect  we  no  doubt  have  to  depend  on  the 
sensations  from  the  moving  member,  as  is  recognized  when 
we  try  to  write  with  a  numb  hand.  In  this  case  the  eye 
cannot  supply  the  lack  of  skin  sensations,  because  we  have 
never  looked  at  the  movements  of  our  fingers,  but  always 
at  the  results;  consequently  no  association  between  the 
visual  sensation  of  the  moving  fingers  and  the  proper 
impulse  to  set  the  muscles  into  co-ordination  has  been 
made.  In  short  it  may  be  said  that  the  general  and.  co- 
ordinating control  is  vested  in  the  muscle  sensation,  and 
the  closer  control  necessary  in  making  one  line  equal  to 
another  is  left  entirely  to  the  eye  when  that  is  used. 

INACCURACIES  DUE  TO  PERCEPTION  AND  MOVE- 
MENT.—Fullerton  and  Cattell  (17)  found  in  their  experi- 
ments to  test  Weber's  law,  in  which  the  subjects  drew  lines 
just  perceptibly  longer  and  shorter  than  a  given  line,  that 
(1)  part  of  the  total  error  in  producing  a  movement  may 
be  attributed  to  inaccuracy  of  perception,  and  (2)  the 
remainder  to  the  failure  of  the  movement  to  obey  our  in- 
tention. To  prove  this  the  experimenters  required  the 
subject  in  each  case  after  making  a  movement  to  judge, 
or  at  least  guess,  whether  the  line  was  too  long  or  too 
short.  As  a  result  the  right  guesses  were  too  large  to  be 
attributed  to  mere  chance,  but  went  to  prove  that  the  error 
of  perception  is  considerably  larger  than  the  error  of 
movement. 

Miinsterberg  found  in  his  studies  of  movement  that  the 
accuracy  of  the  reproduction  of  arm  movements  was  af- 
fected by  emotional  conditions.  Bodily  vivacity  produced 
a  positive  constant  error;  langour  a  negative  constant 


64  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

error;  seriousness  a  negative  constant  error,  and  gaiety  a 
positive  (35,  pp.  81-88).  Munsterberg  thinks  that  it  is 
quite  likely  that  many  of  the  unaccountable  variations  in 
accuracy  are  the  result  of  fleeting  emotions. 

PRACTICE  AND  HABIT. 

The  importance  of  a  treatment  of  practice  and  habit  in 
considering  the  teaching  of  writing  will  be  readily  recog- 
nized by  all  since  writing  in  its  last  analysis  should  be 
considered  as  nearly  an  automatic  process  as  it  is  possible 
to  make  it  such.  The  means  through  which  this  automa- 
tization is  brought  about  is  practice. 

W.  Smythe  Johnson  (25,  p.  64)  has  carried  on  some  valu- 
able researches  in  practice  and  habit,  one  of  his  experi- 
ments being  the  drawing  of  circles  from  copies.  With 
the  exception  of  one  girl  of  twelve,  the  subjects  were 
adults.  The  subjects  were  impressed  with  the  fact  that 
they  must  keep  the  true  circle  constantly  in  memory  after 
they  took  their  eyes  off  the  copies  to  direct  their  hands. 
The  circles  were  drawn  free  hand,  no  portion  of  the  hand 
or  arm  being  allowed  to  rest  on  the  table  during  the 
process. 

Conclusions — 

(1)  When  practice  is  carried  on  until  the  movements 
become  irregular,  the  practice  becomes  injurious,  for  the 
irregular  movements  seem  to  become  incorporated  into  the 
chain  of  reaction  as  certainly  as  do  those  which  are  pur- 
posefully directed.  Therefore  practice  may  tend  to  estab- 
lish irregular  adjustments  as  well  as  regular  ones;  the 
capital  on  hand  at  the  beginning  of  each  succeeding  prac- 
tice period  is  the  sum  of  the  preceding  practices.  If  wrong 
adjustments  of  the  muscles  are  made,  and  these  gain  a 
place  in  the  chain  of  subconscious  memories,  then  these 
adjustments  delay  the  development  of  the  control  over  the 
muscles  for  accurate  adjustment.  In  the  experiment  bet- 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       65 

ter  results  might  have  been  obtained  in  those  cases  where 
the  error  increased  after  the  third  circle,  if  the  practice 
period  had  been  shorter  in  the  first  part  of  the  series  and 
more  prolonged  later. 

(2)  Special   effort    was    accompanied    by   unnecessary 
movements  of  the  body,  but  as  the  action  became  more 
habitual  most  of  these  distortions  disappeared.     It  is  prob- 
ably true  that  when  there  is  a  tension  of  some  muscles 
while  others  are  being  vigorously  exercised,  they  become 
influenced  in  proportion  to  this  tension. 

(3)  Since  some  subjects  increased  while  others  decreased 
the  size  of  the  successive  circles  drawn,  the  conclusion  may 
be  drawn  that  each  individual  has  a  certain  adjustment 
of  the  muscles  in  writing  and  drawing  which  should  be 
taken  into  consideration  when  training  the  muscles  for 
accurate  adjustment. 

In  the  experiment  made  by  Johnson,  continued  from  six 
to  eleven  days,  in  which  each  of  seven  persons  tapped  at  the 
corners  of  an  equilateral  triangle,  it  was  found  that  the 
greatest  gain  in  rapidity  of  triangular  movements  of  the 
hand,  as  well  as  in  the  regularity  of  successive  movements, 
were  made  in  the  early  part  of  the  practice,  before  fatigue 
set  in.  Where  the  exercise  was  continued,  after  a  short  in- 
terval there  was  a  renewal  of  the  effort.  This  goes  to  show 
that  short  periods  of  practice  often  repeated  make  for  more 
rapid  development  of  the  accurate  adjustment  of  voluntary 
movements  than  few  periods  of  longer  duration.  It  takes, 
time  for  muscular  adjustment  to  take  place.  In  the  words 
of  Dr.  James,  "We  learn  to  skate  in  summer." 

In  the  experiment  performed  by  Swift  (40,  p.  170),  in 
which  two  balls  were  kept  in  the  air  with  one  hand,  it  was 
found  that  progress  was  never  uniform,  but  always  by 
jumps.  For  several  days  the  learner  would  show  no  gain, 
or  perhaps  even  fall  back,  and  then  he  would  go  rapidly 


66  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

forward.  During  these  plateau  periods,  in  which  the  sub- 
ject did  not  seem  to  advance,  he  was,  it  is  believed  by  psy- 
chologists, gaining  in  confidence;  in  other  words,  the  co- 
ordination of  muscles  was  being  developed  and  made 
habitual  for  future  use. 

In  Bryan  and  Harter's  studies  in  telegraphy  (7,  p.  345), 
the  plateaus  in  the  practice  curve  mark,  they  say,  the 
time  when  the  successful  co-ordinations  are  made  auto- 
matic. Automatization  is  going  on  during  the  entire  learn- 
ing process,  but  more  than  at  any  other  time  during  the 
plateau  period. 

As  a  conclusion  concerning  the  learning  of  typewriting, 
Prof.  Book  (4,  p.  26)  says:  "To  try  to  crowd  ahead  before 
the  elementary  habits  are  sufficiently  mastered  to  make 
safe  the  taking  of  a  forward  step,  or  to  fail  to  perfect  the 
elemental  associations  which  must  be  combined  to  form 
the  higher  and  more  direct  method  of  writing,  is  fatal  to 
progress  or  interest."  From  his  experiments  he  con- 
cluded that  at  certain  definite  stages  of  advancement, 
where  a  special  habit,  or  group  of  these  special  habits  is 
being  perfected,  the  learners  are  especially  liable  to  settle 
down  to  a  rate  of  work  far  below  their  highest  possibilities, 
and  this  low  rate  of  efficiency  tends  to  become  habitual. 
Bryan  and  Harter  concluded  also  that  only  intense  effort 
counts  in  practice.  As  a  result  of  the  memory  test,  Book 
concludes  that  special  emphasis  should  be  given  to  the 
importance  of  time  intervals  in  learning,  and  that  the 
whole  problem  of  determining  the  most  economic  periods 
of  work  and  rest  for  all  kinds  of  learning  should  be  opened 
up  for  careful  consideration. 

In  the  Yale  Psychological  Labratory  Miss  Smith,  under 
the  direction  of  Dr.  Scripture  (38,  Education  of  Muscular 
Control  and  Power),  made  some  experiments  in  which  the 
measure  of  accuracy  was  the  ability  to  insert  a  needle  into 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       67 

a  hole  J285  inch  in  diameter.  Twenty  experiments  were 
made,  first  with  the  left  hand,  with  a  result  of  50  per  cent, 
of  successful  trials,  and  immediately  20  experiments 
were  made  with  the  right  hand;  result,  60  per  cent,  of  suc- 
cessful trials.  On  the  following  day  and  on  each  succes- 
sive day  200  experiments  were  taken  with  the  right  hand. 
The  percentage  of  succssful  trials  ran  as  follows:  61,  64, 
65,  75,  74,  75,  82,  79,  78,  88.  On  the  tenth  day  20  experi- 
ments were  performed  with  the  left  hand,  and  the  result 
was  76  per  cent,  of  successful  trials,  26  per  cent,  increase 
without  practice.  This  increase  of  steadiness  in  the  un- 
practiced  hand  was  thought  to  have  been  due  to  a  training 
of  the  attention,  since  by  a  special  effort  of  attention, 
after  a  week's  practice  it  was  possible  to  insert  the  needle 
into  the  hole  successfully  for  any  given  ten  times.  Also 
because  any  distraction  of  attention,  as  noise,  invariably 
lowered  the  per  cent,  of  steadiness,  as  was  also  true  in 
case  of  bodily  or  mental  fatigue. 

As  to  the  effect  of  different  directions  of  the  attention 
it  may  be  added  that  concentration  upon  the  muscular 
movement  to  be  performed  was  unfavorable,  but  fixation 
of  attention  upon  the  objective  point  to  be  reached  by 
the  needle  was  productive  of  the  best  results.  Fatigue  of 
the  muscles  of  the  eye  was  a  more  noticeable  result  than 
fatigue  of  the  muscles  directly  practiced. 

Conclusions — 

(1)  Steadiness  of  movement  can  be  increased  by  prac- 
tice. 

(2)  This  increase  of  steadiness  does  not  seem  to  be  lim- 
ited to  the  control  of  the  muscles  immediately  trained,  but 
affects  the  control  of  the  corresponding  muscles  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  body. 

(3)  This  training  seems  to  be  of  a  psychical  rather  than 
of  a  physical  order,  and  to  lie  principally  in  the  steadiness 
of  the  attention. 


68  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing. 

Woodworth,  in  his  studies  of  the  accuracy  of  voluntary 
movements,  before  taken  up,  concluded  with  Johnson  and 
others  that  only  successful  practice  counted,  and  that  un- 
successful practice  was  a  positive  detriment,  inasmuch  as 
wrong  adjustments  were  made  delaying  the  develop- 
ment of  accurate  adjustments,  and  that  practice  of  the 
unsuccessful  kind  discouraged  the  subject  and  caused  him 
to  put  forth  less  effort  in  future  practice. 

^CROSS-EDUCATION. 

The  term  "cross-education"  is  used  to  express  the  fact 
that  the  effect  of  practice  on  one  side  of  the  body  is 
transferred  in  some  degree  to  the  unpracticed  side.  The 
results  from  Scripture's  experiment  in  muscular  control 
and  power,  treated  in  the  preceding  pages,  bear  out  the 
fact  that  the  effects  of  practice  are  transferred,  as  does  also 
Bryan's  tapping  test  gone  over  in  a  preceding  portion  of 
this  writing. 

Davis  (11,  p.  6)  has  investigated  quite  extensively  along 
the  line  of  cross-education,  and  his  results  will  be  taken 
up  very  briefly.  The  experiments  were  carried  on  during 
1898-99,  and  were  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  more 
definitely  the  fact  of  cross-education  and  if  possible  to  find 
out  the  cause.  Tapping  and  lunging  at  points,  as  well  as 
lifting  weights,  were  some  of  the  tests. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

(1)  The  effects   of  exercise  may   be  transferred   to   a 
greater  or  less  degree  from  the  parts  practiced  to  other 
parts  of  the  body;  the  transference  being  greatest  to  sym- 
metrical and  closely  related  parts. 

(2)  There  is  a  close  connection  between  different  parts 
of  the  muscular  system  through  nervous  means;  this  con- 
nection being  closer  between  parts  related  in  function  or 
in  position. 

(3)  Will  power  and  attention  are  educated  by  physical 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       69 

training;  when   developed   for  any  special   act  they   are 
developed  for  all  other  acts. 

As  an  explanation  of  the  cause  of  cross-education,  Davis 
says  in  substance  that  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  most 
important  effects  of  muscular  practice  are  central  rather 
than  peripheral.  There  are  two  central  effects  to  be  dis- 
tinguished, (l)that  dependent  on  the  development  of 
motor  centers;  that  is,  through  exercise;  (2)  that  de- 
pendent on  the  development  of  psychical  factors,  notably 
attention  and  will  power.  Of  these  two  effects  he  con- 
siders the  first  as  being  more  important,  since  in  the  tap- 
ping test  close  attention  and  a  strong  will  power  were 
hindrances,  but  in  tests  requiring  strong  effort  these  fac- 
tors are  useful. 

MOVEMENTS  USED  IN  WRITING. 

Investigations  have  shown  that  the  nervous  mechanism 
involved  in  the  attempt  to  be  precise  with  the  fingers  prob- 
ably requires  an  adjustment  of  a  larger  area  of  muscular 
and  nervous  tissues  than  those  of  any  other  movement 
of  the  body.  It  is  said  that  precision  in  drawing  a 
fine  line  requires  steadiness  not  only  of  the  finger  move- 
ment itself,  but  of  the  hand,  the  whole  arm  and  even  of 
the  whole  body.  Precision  seems  to  involve  two  processes, 
(1)  steadiness  of  the  central  organism  as  a  platform  upon 
which  to  rest,  and  (2)  the  finer  nerve  adjustments  of  the 
most  complex  nervous  elements  (8,  p.  58). 

Hancock  (22,  Motor  Ability)  has  investigated  this  phase 
of  the  problem  in  his  experiment  testing  the  ability  of  chil- 
dren to  stand  still.  The  test  was  to  have  a  child  with  feet 
close  together,  hands  at  side,  and  attention  on  some  dis- 
tant object,  stand  still  for  one  minute.  An  ataxagraph, 
which  automatically  registered  the  swayings  of  the  subject 
upon  smoked  paper,  was  attached  to  a  cap  worn  on  the 
head.  In  this  way  168  boys  and  girls  of  Worcester,  aged 
5-7  years,  were  tested. 


70  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

Results:  The  tests  showed  that  during  these  two  years 
the  girls  gained  in  steadiness  32  or  33  per  cent,  of  the 
power  of  control  at  five  years  of  age,  while  the  boys  gained 
about  15  or  16  per  cent. 

H.  S.  Curtis,  in  his  study  of  inhibition,  tested  the  ability 
of  children  of  various  ages  to  sit  perfectly  still,  and  as  a 
result  he  found  that  an  ordinary  child  cannot  on  an  average 
sit  still  more  than  30  seconds  when  under  five  years  of 
age,  and  children  from  five  to  ten  years  of  age  are  unable 
to  sit  still  for  more  than  one  and  one-half  minutes  at  any 
time.  He  explains  this  on  the  grounds  that  the  higher 
centers  of  voluntary  control  are  not  developed  in  any 
degree  until  a  late  period  of  child  life.  It  was  found  that 
mental  occupation  aided  greatly  in  the  control  of  muscular 
restlessness. 

PERIPHERAL  UNSTEADINESS. 

Corresponding  to  the  larger  swaying  of  the  central 
movements,  there  are  numerous  small  vibrations  in  the 
peripheral  muscles  involved  in  the  adjustment  for  fine 
movements.  Though  these  movements  are  imperceptible 
to  ordinary  observation,  experimentally  they  are  always 
demonstrable.  In  early  infancy  they  appear  in  the  form 
of  apparently  nervous  twitchings  that  constantly  occur  in 
nearly  every  muscle  of  the  body,  even  during  sleep.  These 
are  perfectly  normal  and  are  signs  of  health.  They  tend 
to  disappear  in  conditions  of  lowered  nutriment,  and  in 
idiotic  infants  fewer  are  found.  As  the  infant  grows 
these  movements  become  less  noticeable,  gradually  tending 
to  disappear  as  the  nervous  and  muscular  mechanism  is 
perfected;  the  lower  mechanisms  pass  under  control  of 
higher  brain  levels. 

ACT  OF  WRITING. 

The  writing  movements  are  made  up  of  different  factors, 
and  yet  all  these  must  fit  each  other  perfectly.  The  finer 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       71 

pen  strokes  made  with  the  fingers  must  not  interfere  with 
the  movements  of  the  arm  across  the  page.  The  muscles 
of  the  arm  must  not  contract  until  the  finger-work  is  done, 
and  then  the  arm  must  carry  the  hand  forward  to  a  new 
point  where  the  fingers  execute  new  pen  strokes.  In  form- 
ing letters  the  child  seems  to  use  finger  movements  almost 
exclusively,  the  hand  and  arm  moving  only  in  the  intervals 
between  the  finger  movements.  The  child  forcibly  moves 
the  hand  and  arm  because  the  fingers  become  so  cramped 
that  they  must  be  relieved  in  a  measure  by  a  moving  of 
the  hand  forward.  At  this  stage  of  learning  to  write  there 
is  a  lack  of  unity  between  the  finger  movements  and  those 
of  the  hand  and  arm. 

Dr.  Judd  found  that  there  were  certain  parts  of  the  hand 
which  did  not  participate  in  the  finger  movement,  i.  e.,  the 
fifth  metacarpal  bone  just  behind  the  little  finger.  He 
found  that  by  attaching  a  tracer  to  this  bone  he  could  dis- 
cover what  movements  belonged  to  the  hand  by  means  of 
the  additional  writing  or  tracing.  The  instrument  did  not 
record  (1)  slight  movements  upward  or  downward,  and 
(2)  movements  of  supination  or  pronation — the  rotating 
of  the  hand  so  that  it  tends  to  lie  flat  on  its  palm  (26, 
p.  170). 

One  of  the  records  is  shown  in  Fig. 15  (26,  p.  172).  On 
the  left  appear  the  letters  written,  and  on  the  right  the 
tracer-record.  The  most  obvious  result  is  that  the  hand 
participated  only  in  the  forward  movement  and  the  fingers' 


l^  34>  5  6  7  S  9 

\\\   [ 

[Me. 


/ 

10    11 


72  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

work  seemed  to  be  to  form  the  letters.  The  lines  between 
1  and  3  in  the  tracer-record  represent  the  whole  movement 
of  the  hand  during  the  writing  of  the  letter  1  and  the  first 
stroke  of  the  letter  e.  In  the  tracer-record  the  total  move- 
ment of  the  hand  from  the  top  of  1  to  the  top  of  the  next  1 
furnishes  a  striking  illustration  of  the  relation  between 
hand  movement  and  finger  movement  in  forming  the  letter 
a.  The  movement  6-7  in  the  tracer-record  shows  the  part 
played  by  the  hand  in  making  the  downward  stroke  of  the 
1  and  in  carrying  the  fingers  forward  to  the  position  from 
which  they  did  the  greater  part  of  the  work  of  forming  a. 
Contrast  6-7  with  2-3,  which  represents  a  similar  move- 
ment, and  a  characteristic  fact  in  all  hand  movements  will 
be  observed,  namely,  that  in  almost  every  case  the  hand 
does  its  part  in  forming  a  letter  before  the  fingers  begin 
their  finer  formative  work. 

Another  result  observed  in  this  tracer-record  appears  in 
the  difference  in  slope  of  the  three  parts,  1-10,  10-5,  and 
5-9.  1-10  indicates  the  movement  of  the  hand  during  the 
writing  of  the  first  group  of  letters.  From  the  slope  the 
indication  seems  to  be  that  the  hand  executed  a  consider- 
able movement  from  left  to  right  on  its  own  center  in  the 
wrist.  The  slope  in  the  line  10-5,  brought  about  by  the 
movement  executed  during  the  pause  between  the  writing 
of  the  two  groups  of  letters,  indicates  that  this  movement 
was  made  from  an  entirely  different  center;  an  arm  move- 
ment centered  at  the  elbow  instead  of  at  the  wrist,  as  was 
the  case  in  the  movement  1-10.  A  wrist  movement  from 
right  to  left  is  indicated  by  the  convex  form  of  the  line 
just  before  5.  The  interval  between  the  groups  of  letters 
seems  to  have  been  employed  in  executing  an  arm  move- 
ment which  carried  the  hand  forward  and  in  executing  a 
backward  wrist  movement  which  prepared  the  hand  to  go 
on  with  the  new  series  of  forward  movements  recorded 
from  5-9. 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       73 

General  Conclusions: — 

(1)  In  ordinary  writing  the  fine  formative  movements 
are  executed  by  the  fingers. 

(2)  The  movement  which  carries  the  fingers  forward 
are  executed  by  the  hand  or  arm. 

(3)  The  pauses  between  groups  of  letters  are  utilized 
for  longer  forward  arm  movements  which  bring  the  hand 
back  into  an  easy  working  position. 

(4)  A  comparison  of  the  different  types  of  co-ordination 
obtained  from  the  experiment  shows  that  each  individual 
has  his  own  peculiar  combination  of  arm  and  hand  and 
finger  movements,  and  that  forms  of  co-ordination  are  as 
numerous  and  various  as  are  the  individuals  who  write. 

(5)  The  hand  usually  requires  a  few  strokes  at  first  to 
adjust  itself;  the  necessary  adjustment  sometimes  being 
brought  about  by  a  greater  emphasis  on  finger  movement, 
and  sometimes  by  a  more  pronounced  hand  movement. 

(6)  Any  change  in  the  condition  under  which  the  sub- 
ject writes  will  modify  the  character  of  co-ordination,  i.  e., 
changing  from  a  hard  to  a  soft  pencil,  from  a  vertical 
position  of  the  paper  to  an  oblique,  will  produce  variations 
in  the  character  of  the  muscular  co-ordination,  even  when 
the  product  of  the  movement   (the  written  letter)    does 
not  seem  to  be  changed. 

PRONATION. 

There  is  another  movement  which  enters  into  the  total 
complex  of  writing  movements  and  is  well  worthy  of 
notice  before  passing  to  another  subject.  This  movement 
is  known  as  pronation.  It  consists  in  rotating  the  hand 
so  that  it  tends  at  all  times  to  lie  flat  on  its  palm.  This 
rotary  movement  is  possible  because  the  bones  of  the 
forearm,  the  ulna  and  radius,  fasten  at  the  wrist  in  such 
a  manner  that  they  can  turn  the  hand,  causing  the  palm 


74  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

to  lie  either  up  or  down.  When  the  palm  is  downward,  or 
prone,  the  position  is  due  to  the  movement  of  pronation. 
In  the  course  of  writing  a  line  across  the  page  most  adults 
make  a  slight  movement  of  pronation.  The  gradual  modi- 
fication in  the  position  of  the  arm  axis  with  reference  to 
the  edge  of  the  paper,  which  takes  place  during  the  writing 
of  a  line,  requires  some  definite  form  of  compensating 
movement,  if  the  slope  of  the  letters  is  to  be  kept  uniform 
with  reference  to  the  edges  of  the  paper  (26,  p.  181). 
Specimens  of  ordinary  handwriting  show  that  only  partial 
corrections  of  the  slope  of  finger  movements  have  usually 
been  effected  by  ordinary  writers,  i.  e.,  the  slopes  of  letters 
at  the  end  of  a  line,  or  at  the  end  of  a  word,  are  usually 
greater  than  the  slopes  at  the  beginning.  Failure  to  cor- 
rect the  slope  gives  to  the  line  and  to  the  word  a  somewhat 
irregular  appearance  commonly  noticeable  in  ordinary 
writing,  and  nearly  always  found  to  a  considerable  degree 
in  the  writings  of  children.  The  movement  of  pronation 
effects  all  the  corrections  in  slope  that  are  possible,  since 
it  tends  to  throw  the  upper  end  of  the  pen  toward  the 
writer  and  thus  to  give  the  pen  a  movement  more  nearly 
parallel  to  its  first  movements  at  the  beginning  of  the  line. 
This  movement  of  pronation  is  one  which  most  adults 
have,  but  in  only  a  partially  developed  degree.  Pronation 
as  a  corrective  movement  is  a  factor  necessary  to  secure 
uniformity  whatever  the  slope. 

SLOPE. 

Most  of  the  movements  used  in  writing  were  found  by 
investigations  carried  on  by  McAllister  (32,  Movements 
Made  in  Writing)  in  the  Yale  Psychological  Laboratory  to 
be  movements  following  the  direction  of  the  radii  in  quad- 
rants I  and  III  in  the  figure  below.  It  was  found  that  if 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       75 


x'- 


90" 

Y 


n 


m 


•Xo= 


nr 


quadrant  I  be  taken  as  the  standard,  that  quadrant  II 
required  for  the  average  of  all  movements  30  per  cent, 
more  time;  quadrant  III  10  per  cent,  less  time,  and  quad- 
rant IV  25  per  cent,  more  time.  Thus  showing  that  the 
slowest  movements  are  in  quadrant  II.  This  result  indi- 
cates the  direction  in  which  we  might  expect  the  hand  to 
move  if  one  were  asked  to  make  some  long  strokes  with  a 
pen,  or  some  vertical  lines,  rapidly.  These  would  tend  to 
slope  towards  the  right  rather  than  towards  the  left. 

In  McAllister's  experiment  with  kindergarten  children 
in  the  New  Haven  public  schools  the  pupils  drew  rings. 
He  found  that  the  slant  in  some  papers  varied  from  0  to 
175,  but  in  most  cases  there  was  much  less  variety  of 
slant.  Each  subject  made  the  movement  with  one  con- 
tinuous swing  of  the  pencil,  and  no  time  was  allowed  to 
correct  the  movement,  the  muscular  sense  alone  governed 
the  extent  of  the  movement  in  either  direction.  Since  the 
feeling  of  effort  made  by  the  eye  in  running  along  vertical 
lines  is  greater  than  that  made  by  running  over  horizontal 
distances  of  the  same  length,  the  results  showed  an  over- 
estimation  of  the  vertical  distances,  and  leads  to  the  con- 
clusion that  greater  effort  required  to  make  movements 
in  the  direction  of  the  radii  of  quadrants  II  and  IV  causes 
the  distances  passed  over  in  those  directions  to  be  over- 
estimated by  the  muscle  sense.  In  many  cases  the  eye 


76  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

later  discovered  the  error  due  to  the  muscle  sense,  and  a 
desire  to  correct  in  later  drawings  caused  the  variety  of 
slants  found  in  some  papers. 
Conclusions: — 

(1)  Natural  slant  is  the  most  rapid. 

(2)  The  hand  acquires  a  slope  that  is  usually  farther 
removed  from  the  perpendicular  than  the  model  used  as  a 
copy,  a  child  usually  deviating  10°  from  the  vertical. 

(3)  The  greater  the  slant  to  the  right  from  the  yy'  axis, 
the  more  rapid  will  be  the  writing.     A  slant  of  about  75° 
permits  legible  writing,  but  as  the  angle  decreases  below 
70°  the  legibility  decreases  rapidly. 

(4)  A  base  line  is  desirable  to  guide  the  eye  in  writing 
across  a  page  or  in  lining  the  letters  in  a  word.     Other 
lines  cause  the  child  to  give  more  attention  to  spacing  and 
height  than  to  form  and  movement. 

(5)  Free,  full  forearm  movements  in  a  horizontal  plane 
are  made  more  rapidly  towards  the  body  than  away  from 
it,  up  strokes  taking  more  time  than  down  strokes. 

(6)  It  is  desirable  to  have  the  child  connect  the  letters 
in  a  word,  even  though  in  later  life  these  connections  are 
in  many  cases  left  out.     The  reason  for  this  is  that  as  the 
child  slowly  moves  the  hand  in  producing  the  up  stroke, 
the  eye  has  time  to  estimate  distances,  and  the  tops  of 
letters  are  for  that  reason  kept  very  nearly  in  line.    With- 
out these  guiding  lines,  the  letters  are  raised  from  the 

t 
a 
base  line,  i.  e.,  c    . 

(7)  In  the  very  first  stages  speed  should  be  of  little 
importance  to  a  child  learning  to  write.    The  fundamental 
thing  is  to  educate  the  muscles  so  that  the  proper  co- 
ordinations may  be  made  to  form  legible  characters. 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       77 

(8)  It  is  a  great  strain  on  the  hand  and  arm  to  attempt 
to  keep  a  constant  pressure  on  the  paper  for  all  strokes. 
Raising  the  pen  or  pencil  from  the  paper  removes  this 
strain.     After  the  child  has  acquired  some  facility  in  the 
art  of  writing,  the  upward  movements  may  be  made  much 
more  rapidly  and  easily  if  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  the 
path  of  these  movements  on  paper.    The  up  stroke  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  a  word  are  of  no  assistance  to  the 
reader,  hence  they  may  be  dropped.     Binet  and  Courtier 
also  found  that  separated  letters  may  be  made  more  rapidly 
than  connected  ones.     Adult  writing  shows  the  continual 
lifting  of  the  pen.     Shading  of  down  strokes  provides  a 
means  of  relieving  the  strain  by  varying  the  pressure. 

(9)  For  rapid  writing  only  lines  essential  to  the  forms 
of  the  letters  should  be  on  paper. 

(10)  Each  child  should  be  allowed  to  choose  his  own  size 
of  letters. 

(11)  Backhand  writing  is  slow  and  difficult. 

BEST  MOVEMENT. 

Woodworth  (44,  p.  106)  made  some  experiments  in  which 
adult  subjects  made  a  series  of  movements  back  and  forth, 
i.  e.,  a  line  of  small  u's  joined  together,  a  line  of  small 
m's,  etc. 

Results : — 

(1)  The  whole  arm  movement,   if  hastened,  is  by  all 
means  the  hardest  physically  since  it  requires  the  expendi- 
ture of  the  most  energy  and  shakes  the  whole  body. 

(2)  In   uniformity   of  slant,   accuracy   and   speed,   the 
forearm  movement  is  easily  the  best  of  all  the  movements 
used  in  writing. 

TYPES. 

From  an  observation  of  handwriting  one  finds  that  most 
people  have  an  individual  style,  yet  many  products  of 


78  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing, 

adult  writing  show  plainly  the  effects  of  early  instruction 
(copy)  instead  of  individuality.  Preyer  distinguishes  be- 
tween natural  and  artificial  handwriting.  Children  seem 
to  depend  on  copy  to  a  greater  extent  than  is  the  case  with 
adults,  but  as  a  child  advances  in  years  and  practice,  his 
writing  tends  more  and  more  to  change  over  gradually 
into  the  natural. 

Meumann  (31,  p.  301)  in  his  experiments  and  observa- 
tions found  three  types: 

(1)  Masculine, 

(2)  Feminine, 

(3)  Children's. 

(1)  The  characteristics  of  the  masculine  type  is  that  the 
pressure  is  heavier  than  that  of  the  feminine,  and  the 
pressure  is  distributed  so  that  in  every  word  is  shown  a 
place  of  maximum  pressure.     To  this  maximum  the  re- 
maining innervation  is  subordinated  in  a  rythmical  way, 
rising  or  descending  in  a  fixed  curve  to  or  from  the  maxi- 
mum.    This  maximum  is  found  sometimes  at  the  begin- 
ning and  sometimes  at  the  end  of  words,  increasing  with 
the  velocity  of  writing. 

(2)  Women  write  faster  than  men,  and  as  the  speed 
increases  the  pressure  lessens.     In  the  case  of  men  there 
was  more  totality  of  impulse  in  writing  a  word  or  several 
words,  while  in  the  writing  of  women  several  maxima  are 
found  in  a  word.     Women  stop  often  while  writing;  men 
write  with  more  completeness  of  total  impulse,  thus  allow- 
ing more  freedom  for  thought,  yet  tending  to  write  with 
greater  carelessness  than  women. 

(3)  There  is  found  no  maximum  pressure  in  the  writ; 
ing  of  children  six  or  seven  years  of  age;  but  the  separate 
letters,  and  in  the  beginning  separate  strokes,  are  written 
with  equal  pressure.     No  rhythmical  curve  is  shown,  but 
an  irregular  long  drawn  out  one  reaching  the  same  height 


Experiments  Bearing  on  the  Psychology  of  Writing.       79 

with  every  stroke.  While  increased  speed  causes  fixed 
rhythmical  pressure  on  parts  of  words  and  single  letters, 
the  child  uses  always  a  longer  time,  and  every  stroke  is 
made  with  approximately  equal  speed;  absolute  pressure 
therefore  is  less  important. 

The  general  conclusion  is  that  adults  write  with  a  will 
impulse  for  entire  words  or  parts  of  words,  while  children 
use  as  many  will  impulses  as  letters  or  strokes. 

RELATION  OF  ACCURACY  IN  WRITING  TO  SCHOOL 
INTELLIGENCE  AND  SEX. 

Gesell's  experiments  (18,  p.  395)  along  this  line  are  the 
latest  and  most  reliable  source  of  light  on  the  subject. 
He  examined  the  work  of  grades  I-IX  of  the  public  schools 
of  Worcester,  Mass.,  12,600  specimens  in  all  being  classi- 
fied and  tabulated.  Each  of  105  teachers  submitted  four 
sets  of  representative  specimens  written  by  the  pupils  of 
her  grade: 

Group  I.  Specimens  from  three  best  writers  in  grade. 

Group  II.  Specimens  from  three  worst  writers  in  grade. 

Group  III.  Specimens  from  the  three  pupils  of  highest 
mental  ability  as  represented  by  school  standings. 

Group  IV.  Specimens  from  three  pupils  of  the  lowest 
mental  ability  as  represented  by  school  standings. 

To  each  specimen  was  attached  a  slip  giving  desired  data 
about  the  pupil,  as  indicated  below: 

1.  School  intelligence    (as  shown   by  standings):  Very 
Good,  Good,  Poor,  Very  Poor. 

2.  General     intelligence     (irrespective     of     standing)  : 
Bright,  Average,  Dull. 

3.  Motor  ability  (a  careful  judgment  of  the  pupil's  mus- 
cular   dexterity,    as   shown    in    drawing,    sewing,    manual 
training,  and  general  aptness  in  using  figures,  hands,  and 
arms) :  Clever,  Average,  Clumsy. 


80  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

4.  Facility  in  writing:  Ease,  Moderate  Ease,  Effort. 

The  following  table  shows  in  a  graphic  way  the  relation 
of  sex,  school  intelligence,  general  intelligence,  motor 
ability,  and  facility  in  writing  by  classifying  the  number 
in  each  group  under  these  different  heads: 

School  General         Motor      Facility  in 

Sex.  Intelligence.     Intelligence.    Ability.       Writing. 


3    S  ?  ?  I 

MO  >Ofa^^  M    <!      Q  0     «3     O  H     S     a 

Group  1  ...........  122193  86105    82    30    12  122168    25  124174    13  187115    10 

Group  II  ..........  238    77  26    54    92    88    55  60160    95  18124152  52103148 

Group  III  .........  147168  236    64      5  269    46  159146    17  171111    26 

Group  IV  .........  174141  22123170  11    97204  23149137  56141104 

Conclusions: 

1.  For  a  large  number  of  cases,  accuracy  in  writing  of 
the  pupils  of  the  elementary  grades  tends  to  vary  directly 
with  school  intelligence. 

2.  From   the  fifth   grade  up   through   the  high  school, 
girls  as  a  class  write  more  accurately  than  boys. 

3.  Boys  as  a  rule  show  a  greater  tendency  toward  inco- 
ordinated  writing  as  early  as  the  first  grade  and  up  through 
the  high  school. 

4.  The  sex  differences  in  writing  become  marked  about 
the  age  of  ten,  and  are  largely  attributable  to  the  mental 
factors. 

5.  If  writing  is  an  index,  then  painstaking  or  careless 
qualities  in  a  motor  function  bespeak,  in  pupils  of  ele- 
mentary grades,  the  same  qualities  in  general  school  work. 

Kavanagh  (27),  in  his  investigations  of  civil  service 
examination  papers  in  geography,  history,  arithmetic  and 
English,  written  by  1100  boys,  found  the  lowest  correlation 
between  handwriting  and  other  abilities.  He  believed  that 
the  coefficients  for  handwriting  were  somewhat  lower  than 
Pearson's  (Biometrika,  v.  V)  for  the  reason  that  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  groups  differed. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
PEDAGOGY  OF  WRITING. 

It  now  remains  as  the  work  of  this  chapter  to  sum  up 
the  results  of  the  experiments  and  observations  cited  and 
discussed  in  the  previous  one,  and  to  apply  these  in  a 
practical  way  to  the  teaching  of  writing.  The  subject  of 
writing  has  been  looked  upon  in  the  past  as  being  of  minor 
importance,  hence  little  pedagogical  discussion  of  a  psy- 
chological character  has  centered  around  the  topic,  and 
teachers  have  followed  this  system  of  penmanship  and  the 
other  without  realizing  that  there  might  be  some  funda- 
mental truths  which  ought  to  underlie  the  teaching  of  all 
writing.  The  very  fact  that  we  have  different  systems  of 
writing,  as  we  have  of  physical  training,  clearly  demon- 
strates that  rock  bottom,  psychologically,  has  not  been 
struck.  When  we  come  to  the  real,  vital  facts  in  writing 
there  must  of  necessity  be  a  universal  system,  and  it  is 
with  a  desire  to  attempt  to  "blaze  the  trail,"  as  it  were, 
that  these  experiments  have  been  examined,  parts  ex- 
tracted and  discussed,  and  the  following  effort  to  apply 
the  conclusions  educationally  has  been  made.  If  it  does 
no  more  than  to  interest  and  direct  educators'  attention 
to  the  possibilities  of  the  subject,  the  attempt  will  not  have 
been  made  in  vain.  The  topics  discussed  in  the  following 
pages  are  suggestive  and  vital;  no  attempt  will  be  made 
to  cover  the  whole  field  or  to  enter  into  all  the  details 
possible  under  any  one  topic  discussed. 

81 


82  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

ORIGIN  OF  HANDWRITING. 

From  observing  his  child,  Baldwin  (3,  p.  86)  found  that 
she  showed  great  fondness  for  drawing  and  writing  as 
soon  as  imitation  was  well  fixed,  or  from  the  19th  month 
to  the  middle  of  the  27th.  Up  to  the  27th  month  there 
seemed  to  be  no  connection,  apparently,  between  a  men- 
tal picture  in  consciousness  and  the  movements  made 
by  the  hands  and  fingers  in  attempting  to  draw;  that  is, 
the  drawing  appeared  to  be  the  vaguest  and  most  general 
imitations  of  the  teacher's  movements,  not  the  tracing  of 
a  mental  picture.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  the  scribbling 
of  young  children  in  imitation  of  the  fast  movements 
observed  in  adults'  writing.  The  resulting  product  does 
not  seem  to  bother  the  child  in  the  least  and  he  is  perfectly 
satisfied  with  going  through  the  quick  movements  regard- 
less of  the  correctness  of  the  resulting  forms.  From  an- 
gular straight  lines  the  child  gradually  learns  to  make 
curves,  and  from  movements  in  one  direction  exculsively, 
he  proceeds  to  reverse,  and  instead  of  attempting  simple 
figures  only,  more  intricate,  complex  ones  are  attempted. 
Baldwin  found  that  in  the  27th  month  his  child  came 
into  the  idea  of  tracery  imitation,  or  the  sense  of  con- 
nection between  what  was  visible  in  her  own  consciousness 
and  the  movement  of  her  own  hand.  Then  the  attention 
was  directed  to  the  form  instead  of  being  centered  upon 
the  movement,  and  an  effort  was  made  to  imitate  the  visible 
figure  by  using  different  movements;  thus  the  "trial  and 
success"  method  seems  to  be  the  one  by  which  the  child 
comes  into  his  ability  to  write. 

The  acquisition  of  writing  involves  three  series  of  sen- 
sations: (1)  The  child  gets  his  visual  form  series  first 
since  he  can  recognize  and  even  name  figures,  pictures, 
etc.,  before  he  draws  or  sees  them  drawn;  (2)  the  child  in 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  83 

drawing  or  writing  moves  his  hand  thus  getting  sensations 
from  the  hand  itself  according  to  its  locality  at  any 
moment,  i.  e.,  there  will  be  touch  sensations,  joint  sensa- 
tions, muscle-tension  sensations,  etc.;  (3)  the  child  also 
sees  other  people's  movements,  as  well  as  his  own;  this 
gives  him  a  more  or  less  exact  additional  series  of  eye 
sensations,  according  to  his  ability  to  see  in  such  sets  of 
movements  a  regular  visual  form. 

Tracery  imitation  is  not  writing,  as  there  is  no  sensation 
of  movement  whereby  the  operations  of  the  hand  are  held 
in  control.  The  arm  at  first  appears  to  be  capable  of 
extremely  few  movements,  the  elbow  one,  and  the  fingers 
of  none;  consequently  the  child  starts  with  few  definite 
arm  movements.  Later  his  muscular  movements  get 
broken  up  into  units  and  are  recombined  into  new  series. 

LEARNING  TO  WRITE. 

It  is  a  well-estabilshed  fact  that  the  child  gets  little  or 
no  direct  help  in  the  development  of  writing  movements 
from  inheritance.  Walking  is  largely  provided  for  in  the 
brain  tracts  which  the  child  inherits  from  his  ancestors 
(26,  Typical  Form  of  Motor  Development).  In  learning, 
he  has  only  to  assist  the  already  established  organization 
to  mature,  while  some  instances  are  on  record  (Kirkpat- 
rick's  child,  Fundamentals  of  Child  Study)  where  the  indi- 
vidual did  not  even  have  to  learn.  The  writing  activity  is 
very  much  more  a  product  of  individual  development.  If 
one  should  observe  a  child  just  beginning  to  learn  to  write, 
one  would  be  struck  by  the  excess  of  muscular  activity 
present.  The  pencil  is  grasped  too  tightly,  the  child  moves 
parts  of  his  body  that  do  not  contribute  to  writing,  i.  e., 
the  other  hand,  the  head,  the  face,  etc.  This  excess  of 
movement  is  due  to  what  is  technically  known  as  diffusion. 
The  meaning  of  the  term  is  that  the  nervous  impulse  has 


84  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing. 

not  been  carried  through  the  brain  along  any  single  well- 
developed  tract,  but  is  scattered  or  diffused  throughout 
the  undeveloped  brain  tissues  in  such  a  way  as  to  pass 
out  at  a  number  of  different  points,  thus  giving  rise  to  a 
great  number  of  unnecessary  movements.  At  a  later 
stage  this  diffusion  does  not  show  itself  in  excess  of  move- 
ment, but  appears  in  irregularities  found  in  lines  made 
by  children,  i.  e.,  slipping  to  one  side  in  a  well-intended 
line  means  that  certain  muscles  of  the  fingers  or  hand  did 
not  receive  just  the  right  amount  of  stimulation,  but  were 
stimulated,  as  compared  with  the  other  muscles,  to  excess. 
Overproduction  of  movement,  as  diffusion,  has  advan- 
tages as  through  such  excess  of  movement  individuality  is 
developed.  A  child  cannot  set  about  performing  an  act 
voluntarily  until  he  has  discovered  it  in  some  way,  and 
then  from  the  excess  of  movement  the  right  factors  are 
selected.  The  organism  of  the  individual  determines  to 
some  degree  the  movements  selected.  Teachers  should 
recognize  the  diffuse  character  of  movement  in  its  earlier 
stages,  i.  e.,  the  child's  constant  movement  of  the  face 
during  writing;  a  tendency  to  move  towards  an  object  of 
interest  and  attention,  as  bringing  the  head  down  to  the 
paper  while  writing,  the  bending  of  the  body  over  the 
task  to  be  performed,  etc.  These  are  all  perfectly  natural, 
and  it  is  the  work  of  the  teacher  to  help  the  child  to  over- 
come such  tendencies.  In  order  to  do  so  the  best  external 
conditions  should  be  furnished  and  attention  given  to  the 
cultivation  of  correct  position,  etc. 

ANALYSIS  OF  WRITING. 

Meumann  (31,  p.  300)  found  that  children  write  letters 
singly,  for  each  stroke  a  new  impulse,  just  as  in  reading 
the  child  sees  and  reads  only  one  word  at  a  time  at  first. 
Still  speaking  precedes  writing,  so  the  child  speaks  but  a 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  85 

single  syllable  while  the  adult  pronounces  a  word,  phrase 
or  whole  sentence.  He  concluded  that  familiar  words  were 
not  written  as  single  letters,  but  the  word  was  recognized 
as  an  entirety;  however,  when  the  mechanism  of  writing 
is  concerned,  as  in  dictation,  translation  or  writing  from 
memory,  the  words  have  to  be  cut  to  pieces.  These  three 
cases  have  this  in  common,  the  motor  centers  for  setting 
free  the  impulses  of  writing  are  the  same  as  those  which 
concern  the  motor  act  of  writing.  Each  time  the  act  of 
writing  is  stimulated,  these  three  cases  must  be  distin- 
guished or  separated  through  the  parts  of  the  same  center. 
Storring's  anatomical  chart  diagrams  the  centers  of  word 
meaning  (WM),  of  the  movements  of  writing  (MW),  of 
the  visual  image  of  writing  (VIW),  the  speaking  of  words 
(SpW),  and  the  sound  of  words  (SdW). 


V1W 


SpW 


When  dictation  is  written,  the  association  SdW-SpW- 
MW  and  SdW-SpW-VIW-MW  is  affected.  There  is  asso- 
ciation also  through  the  path  SdW-WM-MW,  and  quite 
frequently  the  path  SdW-VIW-MW  is  used. 

The  reproduction  of  the  image  of  the  written  word  by 


86  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

the  writing  of  dictation  depends  on  two  vital  causes,  the 
visual  word-placing  and  the  image  of  the  spoken  word,  or 
the  percept  of  the  spoken  word — both  are  of  great  value. 

Spontaneous  writing  comes  as  a  result  of  the  mental 
process  WM-SdW-SpW-MW  and  WM-SdW-SpW-VIW-MW. 
The  conclusion  is  almost  reached  that  by  a  broader  devel- 
opment of  writing,  the  way  over  VIW  always  becomes  of 
less  value. 

It  is  seen  from  the  diagram  that  one  writes  hearing  and 
speaking,  the  inner  voice,  the  still  speaking,  precedes  the 
act  of  writing.  Hearing  and  speaking  we  write  with  the 
image  of  the  writing  ahead  of  the  act  of  writing,  thus  the 
phenomena  of  anticipation  seems  to  go  ahead  of  all  writ- 
ing. Meumann  would  have  us  think  that  the  extraordin- 
ary significance  of  fluent  writing  is  the  correct  knowledge 
of  the  audible  analysis  of  speech,  for  if  the  inner  voice  of 
writing  hastens  on  ahead  correctly,  the  child  writes  more 
quickly,  always  sure  that  he  knows  the  elements  of  the 
words  as  they  sound,  and  that  he  has  control  of  this  partial 
anticipatory  writing  (vorgeschriebene). 

TIME  FOR  BEGINNING. 

There  are  two  questions  that  need  to  be  considered,  (1) 
when  is  the  child  physically  fit  to  learn  to  write?  (2)  when 
does  he  need  to  learn?  Let  us  turn  our  attention  to  the 
solution  of  the  first  question.  Flechsig's  investigations 
showed  that  when  a  nerve  fiber  acquires  its  sheath,  or  be- 
comes medullated,  then  it  is  functionally  mature.  He  also 
found  that  fibers  connected  with  the  higher  centers  are 
not  medullated.  The  direction  of  growth  of  medullation 
is  not  from  the  highest  cerebral  centers  toward  the  pe- 
riphery, but  in  the  opposite  direction.  Consequently  the 
development  of  these  higher  centers  comes  through  the 
movements  in  the  periphery.  Writing  is  acquird  by  means 
of  the  higher  centers.  Accepting  Jackson's  Three-Level- 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  87 

Theory  of  the  nervous  system,  mentioned  before,  it  has 
been  found  that  the  most  simple  nervous  centers  and  levels 
are  the  most  organized,  while  the  most  complex  is  the  least. 
The  hierarchy  of  control  when  studied  shows  that  move- 
ments become  gradually  more  complex,  more  co-ordinated 
and  integrated,  or,  in  other  words,  the  same  muscles  are 
controlled  by  these  three  different  levels.  After  movements 
appear  in  reflex  use,  they  can  only  become  compounded,  or 
rather  complexed.  Donaldson's  citation  of  the  training  of 
an  idiot's  hand  goes  to  prove  that  movement  produces 
development  of  nervous  substance.  Should  writing  be 
taught  in  order  that  the  higher  centers  may  be  developed, 
or  should  this  development  be  brought  about  by  means 
of  other  larger  movements,  such  as  those  brought  into 
play  in  manual  training,  drawing,  play,  etc.?  This  is  a 
question  needing  the  careful  consideration  of  all  edu- 
cators. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  much  light  will  be  thrown 
on  this  problem  before  long  by  more  careful  experiments 
in  psychology  and  physiology.  All  will  grant  that  the 
movements  used  in  writing  should  pass  from  the  control 
of  the  highest  level  to  that  of  the  lowest  by  means  of 
practice,  yet  the  acquisition  of  writing  cannot  help  being 
in  a  greater  or  less  degree  a  conscious  process.  However, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  whatever  is  to  be  done  uncon- 
sciously in  after  life  should  be  acquired  as  unconsciously 
as  possible.  At  first  some  little  attention  must  be  paid 
to  the  forms,  but  as  early  in  the  process  of  learning  to 
write  as  possible,  the  emphasis  should  be  upon  the  thought 
to  be  expressed,  thus  allowing  the  sensory  impulses  to 
control  the  writing  movements  and  these  will  through 
practice  become  more  or  less  automatic. 

In  the  experiments  carried  out  by  Bryan  and  Gilbert,  it 
was  found  that  the  rapidity  of  the  motor  ability  of  the 
hand  and  arm  increased  with  age  and  reached  maturity 
about  the  period  of  adolescence.  It  was  found  that  when 


88  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of  Writing. 

boys  entered  school  their  rate  of  tapping,  as  compared  to 
the  100  per  cent,  rate  of  tapping  at  16  years,  was  for  the 
fingers  57,  wrist  64,  elbow  72,  and  shoulder  69;  while  the 
girls  stood,  fingers  63,  wrist  65,  elbow  75,  and  shoulder  71. 
Thus  it  is  obvious  that  the  fingers  of  a  16-year-old  boy 
are  possessed  of  almost  twice  the  ability  of  the  fingers  of 
a  boy  of  six.  It  was  also  noticed  that  the  more  funda- 
mental movements  tend  to  earlier  maturity  than  the  acces- 
sory movements,  i.  e.,  the  finger  had  acquired  in  both  boys 
and  girls  of  six  a  smaller  percentage  of  its  ability  at  16 
years  of  age  than  any  of  the  other  parts,  and  the  wrist 
showed  less  development  than  the  elbow  and  shoulder. 
After  nine  or  ten  years  of  age  it  was  found  by  Gilbert 
that  the  finger  movement  acquired  a  large  per  cent,  of 
its  ability,  28  per  cent  in  boys  and  17.5  per  cent,  in  girls. 
Bryan  found  that  the  rate  of  tapping  for  the  wrist  and 
fingers  does  not  gain  much  upon  the  shoulder  until  the 
child  is  11  years  of  age,  and  then  the  finger  rate  relatively 
springs  forward  very  quickly.  The  period  of  nascency 
for  the  fingers  cannot  be  before  the  tenth  year,  and  only 
reaches  its  culmination  in  power  probably  about  the  six- 
teenth year. 

Woodworth  attributed  inaccuracy  in  movement  to  (1) 
inaccuracy  of  perception,  (2)  inaccuracy  due  to  the  failure 
of  the  movement  to  obey  our  intention,  (3)  inaccuracy  in 
the  process  of  adjusting  the  movement  to  the  perception. 
In  regard  to  the  first,  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  children 
when  young  see  only  the  most  characteristic  or  interesting 
thing  about  objects  or  drawings.  They  have  not  as  yet 
the  power  to  concentrate  their  attention  on  an  object 
and  analyze  it  into  its  parts,  much  less  have  they  the  power 
to  analyze  a  written  word  into  its  elements  and  hold  these 
in  mind  without  straining  and  overtaxing  the  nervous 
system  and  ruining  the  eyesight.  Little  children  five  years 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  89 

of  age  copying  writing,  perhaps  from  a  distance,  is  a  piti- 
able sight,  and  yet  it  is  found  nearly  everywhere  in  current 
practice. 

Writing  requires  the  adjustment  of  a  larger  area  of 
muscular  and  nervous  tissues  than  any  other  movement 
of  the  body.     It  requires  a  steadiness  not  only  of  the 
hand,  but  of  the  whole  body.     Hancock  tested  the  ability  . 
of  children,  aged  5-7  years,  to  stand  still,  and  found  that   < 
the  girls  in  these  two  years  gained  in  steadiness  32  or  33  ' 
per  cent,  of  the  power  of  control  at  five  years  of  age,  while 
the  boys  gained  about  15  or  16  per  cent.     Curtis  in  his 
study  of  inhibition  found  that  children  from  five  to  ten  / 
years  of  age  were  unable  to  sit  still  for  more  than  one  \ 
and  one-half  minutes  at  any  one  time,  showing  that  the 
higher  centers  of  voluntary  control  are  not  developed  in 
any  great  degree  until  a  late  period  of  child  life. 

Besides  the  central  unsteadiness,  there  is  also  a  periph- 
eral unsteadiness  consisting  of  numerous  small  vibrations 
in  the  peripheral  muscles  involved  in  the  adjustment  for 
fine  movements.  As  the  higher  centers  develop,  these 
movements  tend  to  disappear.  These  movements  will  be 
treated  at  greater  length  under  the  subject  of  diffusion. 

Since  writing  involves  very  complex  and  finely  co-ordi- 
nated movements,  requiring  control  of  the  fingers,  hand,  , 
and  arm,  the  child  is  not  physiologically  fitted  to  learn  to 
write  until  the  ninth  or  tenth  year  at  least.  Even  then 
it  is  a  question  whether  writing  ought  to  be  undertaken 
unless  the  hand  has  been  trained  through  drawing,  manual 
training,  etc.,  and  a  steadiness  of  attention  and  sureness 
of  eye  developed.  The  practical  rule  would  be  to  begin 
with  work  that  involved  larger  movements  and  co-ordina- 
tions, and  gradually  work  down  to  the  finer  and  more 
complex.  It  must  be  very  evident  to  all  who  think  that 
the  very  complex  movements  and  close  attention  required 


90  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

in  writing  should  not  come  first  in  the  child's  school  life, 

but  be  postponed  until  he  has  gained  some  control  over 

|  himself.     It  must  be  remembered  that  the  fingers  are  the 

I  last  part  of  the  child's  body  to  fully  mature,  and  hence  he 

\has  little  control  over  them.     This  is  the  reason  why  little 

children    appear   careless   many    times,    dropping    pencils, 

making  wrong  lines  in  drawings  and  writing,  etc. 

The  answer  to  the  question,  when  does  a  child  need  to 
learn  to  write?  may  be  summed  up  briefly  in  a  few  state- 
ments.    Formerly  writing  was  taught  to  fix  the  associa- 
tions in  reading,  but  since  the  idea  has  come  in  that  it  is 
much  better  not  to  urge  the  child  to  see  each  letter,  or 
part,  of  the  words  read,  but  to  be  able  to  recognize  them 
I  quickly  by  their  most  striking  characteristics  there  is  no 
I  excuse  to  introduce  writing  along  with  the  difficult  process 
I  of  learning  to  read.     Writing  does  not  need  to  be  taught 
until  the  child  begins  to  feel  a  desire  to  express  himself 
in  written  language  other  than  pictures,  etc.     Spelling  and 
writing  are  both  the  tools  of  language,  and  ought  to  be 
taken  up  together  at  a  later  stage  than  that  of  learning 
to  read. 

METHOD:  ANALYTIC  OR  SYNTHETIC? 

The  thing  of  first  importance  in  teaching  writing  is  the 
correct  adaptation  and  careful  repetition  of  the  elements 
of  the  letters.  If  the  forms  are  learned  incorrectly,  they 
later,  through  practice,  become  automatic  in  these  un- 
gainly shapes,  and  then  it  is  almost  impossible  to  change 
to  the  correct  forms.  Correctness  is  more  important  than 
rapidity  in  the  first  stages  of  learning  to  write.  To  attain 
this  correctness  Meumann  thinks  that  the  synthetic  method 
is  better  than  the  analytic,  because  a  long  delay  over  the 
elements  and  a  correct  adaptation  of  them  can  be  later 
guaranteed.  By  having  the  child  form  one  letter  at  a 
time,  the  innervation  of  the  mind  is  retarded.  In  later 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  91 

life  the  child  never  needs  to  write  letter  by  letter,  but 
words  as  wholes,  with  as  much  totality  of  impulse  for 
each  as  possible.  This  working  toward  a  more  and  more 
complete  innervation  tendency  should  be  one  of  the  chief 
aims  in  teaching  writing.  Prof.  Book  found  from  his  ex- 
periments with  subjects  learning  to  typewrite  that  learners 
are  especially  liable  to  settle  down  to  a  rate  of  work  far 
below  their  highest  possibilities,  and  that  this  low  rate  of 
speed  tends  to  become  habitual. 

CONTROL  PROCESSES. 

Downey  found  in  her  experiments  no  evidence  of  a  vol- 
untary act  of  writing  without  a  sensory  cue  of  some  sort. 
Woodworth  endeavored  to  find  what  sensations  are  relied 
upon  for  the  government  of  the  extent  of  movement.  He 
found  that  at  ordinary  speed  an  adult  could  write  a  single 
letter  or  short  word  as  well  with  the  eyes  closed  as  with 
them  open.  If  several  words  were  written  with  the  eyes 
closed,  the  alignment  was  lost,  or  some  other  constant 
error  was  evident.  He  concluded  that  when  the  speed  is 
low  enough  to  permit  of  fine  secondary  adjustment,  then 
the  eyes  assisted  very  much  in  forming  the  letters  just 
right.  The  eyes  in  ordinary  writing  keep  track  of  where 
the  writer  is  in  the  line,  of  the  alignment,  spacing,  etc., 
but  for  the  formation  of  the  letters  we  come  to  depend 
mostly  on  muscular  and  tactile  sensibilities.  Woodworth 
thinks  that  when  the  extent  of  a  movement  is  to  be 
judged,  the  eyes  do  it  when  they  are  in  use,  but  that  the 
proper  impulse  to  set  the  muscles  into  co-ordination  is  the 
work  of  the  muscle-sense.  This  is  true  because  in  writing 
one  does  not  look  at  the  movement  of  the  fingers,  but 
always  at  the  result,  consequently  there  is  no  association 
between  the  visual  sensations  of  the  moving  fingers  and 
the  right  impulse  to  cause  the  muscles  to  co-ordinate  in 
just  the  correct  way.  He  concludes  that  in  adult  writing 


92  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

the  co-ordinating  control  is  vested  in  the  muscle-sensation, 
and  the  closer  control  necessary  to  make  one  letter  just 
the  exact  height  of  another  is  left  entirely  to  the  eye. 

There  seems  to  be  three  stages  in  the  complete  mastery 
of  writing:  (1)  The  visual  control,  (2)  muscle-sense  con- 
trol, (3)  automatic  stage,  the  initial  impulse  together  with 
later  unconscious  adjustments  furnishing  the  control.  The 
first  stage  is  when  the  child  is  learning  to  write  and  he  is 
endeavoring  to  follow  a  copy,  hence  tries  to  imitate  what 
is  set  before  him.  Baldwin  found  that  at  first  his  child 
watched  his  movements  and  paid  no  attention  to  the  result, 
but  that  later  she  connected  the  movements  with  the  copy 
and  then  she  directed  her  attention  to  the  form.  When  the 
child  attempts  to  imitate  a  copy,  it  does  so  in  a  halting, 
uncertain  way,  analyzing  the  form  slowly,  remembering 
one  stroke  or  separate  letter  at  a  time.  This  is  true  even 
when  the  child  is  requested  to  write  words  in  sentences. 
To  make  each  stroke  he  will  make  many  random  move- 
ments, and  from  these  choose  the  successful  ones,  or  the 
ones  giving  the  correct  result,  hence  in  the  work  of  young 
children  there  are  to  be  found  many  corrections.  Adult 
introspection,  Woodworth  says,  very  rarely  reveals  an 
anticipatory  visual  verbal  image,  yet  its  value  and  use  to 
children  is  obvious  enough.  The  child  has  no  muscle- 
sensations,  either  kinaesthetic  or  tactile,  stored  up  in  his 
memory  upon  which  he  can  rely,  these  only  resulting 
from  successful  practice.  Concerning  this  Dr.  McDougall 
writes: 

"The  possibility  of  linking  muscular  reactions  in  a  sys- 
tem of  harmonious  and  purposeful  movements  depends 
upon  the  incoming  stream  of  sensations  which  these  reac- 
tions themselves  arouse.  The  control  of  each  successive 
movement  which  is  to  take  place  is  conditioned  upon  the 
sensing  of  the  adjustment  which  has  just  occurred.  The 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  93 

moment  this  system  of  resident  sensations  is  eliminated 
the  reactions  fall  back  into  the  primitive  chaos  which  is 
exhibited  in  the  impulsive  movements  of  the  infant,  unless, 
indeed,  they  be  directed  in  some  secondary  fashion,  as  by 
the  sense  of  sight"  (6,  p.  242). 

Meumann  found  that  in  the  writings  of  children  there 
was  no  one  maximum  pressure  in  a  word  or  part  of  a  word 
as  is  the  case  in  adult  writing,  but  that  every  stroke  or 
letter  was  made  with  equal  pressure,  showing  that  there 
was  no  totality  of  impulse  in  the  writing  of  words.  Hence, 
the  child  must  of  necessity  write  haltingly,  laboriously, 
irregularly,  because  of  diffusion,  and  under  a  great  strain 
throughout  the  whole  body.  Consequently  little  writing 
should  be  required  when  the  child  first  begins,  and  that 
little  should  be  acquired  as  unconsciously  as  possible,  the 
emphasis  almost  from  the  start  being  not  only  on  the  form 
but  on  the  thought  represented  by  the  form. 

Fullerton  and  Cattell  concluded  that  inaccuracies  in 
drawing  lines  were  due  (1)  to  inaccuracy  of  perception 
and  (2)  failure  of  the  movement  to  obey  the  subject's 
intention.  To  these  Woodworth  adds  a  third,  namely,  an 
inaccuracy  in  the  intention  itself,  or  in  the  process  of 
adjusting  the  movement  to  the  perception.  In  the  case 
of  a  young  child  learning  to  write,  the  error  due  to  each 
of  these  causes  must  of  necessity  be  great  because  of  his 
lack  of  power  to  concentrate  his  attention,  to  co-ordinate 
the  necessary  muscles,  or  to  adjust  his  movement  to  what 
he  with  difficulty  perceives.  Poor  eyesight,  nervousness, 
writing  material,  external  environment,  health,  tempera- 
ture, emotion,  etc.,  all  influence  the  writing  of  children. 
As  before  quoted,  Miinsterberg  thinks  that  it  is  quite  likely 
that  many  of  the  unaccountable  variations  in  accuracy 
result  from  more  or  less  fleeting  emotions.  To  expect 
perfect,  uniform  forms  from  young  children  is  unjust. 


94  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

The  aim  should  be  to  get  the  form  of  the  letters  and  then 
to  encourage  the  child  to  write  with  more  and  more  total 
will  impulses,  thus  increasing  the  speed  and  lessening  the 
strain. 

When  the  child  has  practiced  sufficiently  he  comes  to 
depend  less  upon  sight  and  more  upon  muscle-sensation, 
as  now  he  has  the  correct  ones  to  which  he  may  refer. 
These  have  come  to  him  through  writing.  Woodworth 
believes  that  a  sensory  kinaesthetic  report  on  the  move- 
ment as  it  proceeds  is  usually  present  in  all  acts  of  writing, 
even  though  it  varies  in  different  individuals.  As  a  con- 
scious control  process  this  kinaesthetic  report  has  great 
utility,  usually  acting  as  a  corrective,  but  also  at  times  as 
an  initial  process,  or  cue,  as  well.  The  hand-kinaesthetic 
process  always  accompanies  writing  as  an  act,  but  does  not 
always  enter  into  the  consciousness  of  writing,  since  it 
may  be  in  the  form  of  an  anticipatory  image  or  a  sensa- 
tional report  of  the  movement  as  achieved.  Although  the 
visual  sensations  never  entirely  drop  out,  yet  as  practice 
advances,  the  muscle-sensations  control  the  movement  in 
its  intricate  co-ordinations.  Some  adults  never  get  be- 
yond the  visual  control  stage  and  they  write  haltingly  all 
their  lives,  while  the  majority  of  people  advance  to  the 
muscle-sensation  control,  and  as  a  result  write  faster  than 
the  first  class  mentioned. 

But  there  is  still  a  third  and  final  stage  which  may  be 
termed  the  automatic  stage.  In  this  the  person  apparently 
writes  without  thought  upon  the  form  or  movement,  and 
with  a  very  slight  degree  of  consciousness  of  the  act  and 
result.  The  whole  emphasis  is  thrown  upon  the  thought 
of  what  is  to  be  expressed.  The  impulse  to  write  is  made, 
or  the  movement  is  touched  off,  as  it  were,  and  the  later 
adjustments  are  made  unconsciously.  As  the  writer 
thinks,  his  thoughts  are  immediately  and  unconsciously 
transcribed.  By  reducing  what  was  at  first  a  conscious 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  95 

process  acquired  through  the  higher  centers  of  the  nervous 
system  to  a  reflex  or  automatic  process  almost  uncon- 
sciously controlled  by  the  spinal  nerve  centers,  the  writer 
is  in  reality  furnished  with  more  brain  power  with  which 
to  carry  on  his  higher  thinking.  Let  the  reader  take  a 
pencil  and  write  his  name  quickly,  and  then  write  it  a 
second  time  omitting  a  letter.  Which  writing  required  the 
more  time  and  thought?  Poor  spellers  and  beginners  in 
writing  have  their  attention  constantly  directed  to  the 
form.  All  processes,  such  as  writing  and  spelling,  that  can 
be  made  automatic  should  be  made  so  as  early  as  possible. 
Woodworth  found  that  the  automatic  movement  gained 
slightly  in  uniformity  as  the  speed  increased. 

MOVEMENT. 

After  experimenting  and  observing,  Woodworth  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  for  uniformity  of  slant,  accuracy 
and  speed,  the  forearm  movement  is  by  far  the  best  of  all 
the  movements  used  in  writing.  This  movement  is  to  be 
aimed  at,  but  let  us  now  consider  the  young  child  as  he 
begins  the  work  of  writing.  His  movements  are  jerky, 
cramped,  excessive  and  uncertain;  in  other  words,  unor- 
ganized and  uncontrolled.  Out  of  these  excessive  and 
unorganized  movements  the  later  easy,  fluent  writing 
movement  must  be  developed.  When  the  child  endeavors 
to  use  unpracticed  muscles  his  movements  are  diffused; 
that  is,  the  untrained  movements  are  too  much  spread  out. 
The  right  muscles  do  not  contract  at  the  right  time  and 
the  whole  movement  is  scattered  because  of  the  unorgan- 
ized state  of  the  brain.  There  is  one  thing  that  is  very 
fortunate  about  diffuse  movements  and  that  is  that  without 
them  there  could  be  no  individuality  developed  in  hand- 
writing, for  if  every  sort  of  movement  were  fully  provided 
for  in  the  brain  by  heredity,  then  the  child  would  simply 
go  ahead  in  a  prescribed  way. 


96  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

There  is  a  false  notion  that  the  large  muscles  develop 
before  the  finer  ones.  The  fact  is  that  the  finer  muscles 
are  in  full  operation  early  in  life,  but  the  ability  to  control 
these  through  the  nervous  system  is  not  as  great  as  the 
control  over  the  more  fundamental  muscles.  These  finer 
muscles  are  the  ones  most  easily  stimulated  and  called  into 
action  in  diffuse  movements,  and  the  most  easily  tired. 
Bryan  found  that  in  boys  and  girls  of  six  the  finger  had 
acquired  a  smaller  percentage  of  its  ability  at  16  years 
of  age  than  any  of  the  other  parts.  In  the  first  years 
children  do  all  the  writing  they  do  with  the  fine  finger 
muscles  because  of  diffusion,  but  the  fingers  get  cramped 
and  they  must  be  carried  across  the  page.  When  the 
child  makes  these  additional  arm  movements,  they  are 
made  not  as  well  co-ordinated  additions  to  the  movements 
made  by  the  fingers,  but  as  separate  clumsy  movements 
that  interrupted  the  finger  movements,  i.  e.,  the  child 
writes  with  his  fingers  until  he  can  write  no  more,  and 
then  he  stops  the  movement  entirely  and  carries  his  hand 
across  the  page  to  another  place.  When  the  finger  writing 
goes  on,  the  hand  and  arm  and  other  parts  of  the  body 
through  diffusion  of  stimulation  are  kept  tense  and  ready 
to  move. 

Since  diffusion  tends  to  emphasize  the  small  muscles, 
then  teaching  ought  to  emphasize  the  use  of  the  large 
ones,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  some  teachers  begin 
the  teaching  of  writing  by  having  the  children  use  the 
larger  movements  at  the  blackboard.  Even  then  the  child, 
because  of  diffusion,  grasps  the  crayon  too  tightly.  In 
addition  to  this  work,  large  arm  exercises  ought  to  be 
given.  As  soon  as  the  drawing  stage  of  writing  is  past 
and  the  child  does  not  need  to  go  on  so  slowly  any  longer, 
then  he  should  be  hastened,  and  thus  the  co-operation  of 
arm,  finger  and  hand  movements  will  be  advanced.  The 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  97 

first  results  will  be  scrawls,  but  the  child  must  somehow 
work  out  the  complete  co-ordination  of  his  movements 
since  speed  as  well  as  beauty  of  form  are  the  aims  to  be 
kept  constantly  in  mind  when  teaching  writing.  The  rapid 
writing  makes  separate  action  of  the  finger  movements, 
hand  movements  and  arm  movements,  less  convenient  than 
the  co-operation  of  these.  Even  young  children  should 
not  be  allowed  to  draw  letter  forms  with  the  fingers  long 
after  the  forms  are  in  mind,  but  before  the  fifth  grade  at 
least,  pupils  should  have  acquired  some  fluency  of  the 
forearm  movement. 

SLANT. 

In  his  experiments  in  movements  used  in  writing,  Mc- 
Allister found  that  the  natural  slant  is  the  most  rapid  and 
legible,  and  that  the  greater  the  slant  to  the  right,  the 
more  rapid  will  be  the  writing;  a  slant  of  about  75°  per- 
mits legible  writing,  but  as  the  angle  decreases  below  70° 
the  legibility  rapidly  decreases.  (See  Fig.  p.  76).  He 
also  found  that  the  hand  acquires  a  slope  farther  removed 
from  the  perpendicular,  usually,  than  the  copy.  For  ex- 
ample, if  the  copy  is  vertical,  the  child  will  usually  deviate 
10°  from  the  vertical. 

These  results  will  suffice  to  show  that  a  vertical  hand  is 
not  a  natural  one  for  the  child  nor  the  swiftest,  conse- 
quently when  he  leaves  school  and  is  compelled  to  write 
fast,  he  is  unable  to  keep  on  writing  vertically,  but 
writes  a  miserable,  uneven  slant.  This  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  a  new  set  of  co-ordinated  movements  are  brought  into 
play  and  the  old  ones  have  to  be  broken  up.  Hence  there 
is  but  one  correct  slope,  psychologically,  and  that  is  the 
natural,  or  between  80°  and  70°.  If  the  slope  of  the  copy 
is  85°,  then  the  child  will  write  with  more  of  a  slant  to 
the  right,  perhaps  80° ;  hence  the  model  should  be  of  such 
a  slope  that  even  though  the  child  naturally  deviates  10° 


98  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

from  the  vertical,  yet  by  following  the  copy  he  will  be  led 
to  write  with  a  slant  that  is  most  conducive  to  legibility 
and  speed. 

The  movement  of  pronation,  discussed  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, affects  all  the  possible  corrections  of  slope,  since  by 
means  of  it  the  pen  is  kept  more  nearly  parallel  to  its  first 
movements  at  the  beginning  of  the  line.  The  movement 
of  pronation  is  difficult  to  acquire  perfectly,  consequently 
the  writing  of  children  must  of  necessity  be  irregular  in 
slope,  especially  at  the  beginning  and  end  of  each  line.  In 
order  to  secure  uniformity,  whatever  the  slope,  pronation 
as  a  corrective  movement  must  be  used. 

CONNECTING  LETTERS. 

McAllister  concluded  from  his  experiments  that  forearm 
movements  in  a  horizontal  plane  were  made  with  more 
rapidity  toward  the  body  than  away  from  it,  hence  the 
up  strokes  in  writing  take  more  time  than  the  down 
strokes.  It  is  well  that  this  is  so,  for  when  the  child  is 
connecting  the  letters  in  a  word  and  slowly  moves  his 
hand  in  producing  the  up  strokes,  the  eye  has  time  to 
estimate  the  distance,  consequently  the  letters  are  kept 
more  even.  Hence  at  first  it  is  desirable  to  have  the  child 
connect  the  letters  in  a  word  even  though  later  it  is  better 
to  allow  some  of  these  connections  to  be  dropped  out,  for 
without  these  guiding  lines  the  letters  formed  by  a  begin- 
ner will  be  raised  from  the  base  line  and  the  writing  as  a 
result  be  very  confusing  and  irregular. 

PRESSURE. 

In  all  adult  writing  the  pen  is  lifted  many  times  from  the 
paper  during  the  writing  of  words.  It  is  well  that  this  is 
so  since  it  is  a  great  strain  on  the  fingers,  hand,  and  arm 
to  try  to  write  with  a  constant  pressure  on  the  paper  for 
all  strokes.  When  the  pen  or  pencil  is  removed  from  the 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  09 

paper  the  strain  is  absent.  In  addition  to  this,  the  omis- 
sion of  the  up  strokes  and  only  making  the  characteristic 
ones  adds  much  to  the  speed,  since  the  up  strokes  take 
more  time.  The  writings  of  adults  show  many  omissions 
caused  by  the  raising  of  the  pen  or  pencil,  e.  g.,  examine 
your  own  writing.  Meumann  found  that  men  usually 
wrote  with  a  totality  of  impulse  and  a  maximum  of  pres- 
sure for  each  word,  with  other  weaker  pressures  subor- 
dinate to  the  maximum,  while  women  wrote  with  less  total- 
ity of  impulse  and  with  more  than  one  maximum  pressure 
in  a  word  usually.  This  uneven  pressure  serves  to  relieve 
the  strain,  hence  children  should  be  trained  toward  this 
totality  of  will  impulse  from  the  beginning,  not  only  for 
the  sake  of  speed,  but  also  to  secure  greater  ease  in 
writing. 

VALUE  OF  LINES. 

Woodworth  and  Judd  both  found  that  visual  control 
was  of  value  to  keep  the  writing  on  the  line  or  in  other 
words  to  preserve  the  alignment.  Lines  other  than  the 
base  line  on  the  paper  upon  which  children  write  are 
worse  than  useless;  they  are  positively  injurious  to  move- 
ment and  a  hindrance  to  speed.  The  child  using  them 
creeps  along  in  his  writing  and  very  laboriously  tries  to 
make  the  top  of  the  letters  touch  the  appropriate  lines. 
All  this  is  not  only  a  strain  on  his  eyesight  and  the  fine 
muscles  of  the  fingers,  but  it  hinders  the  child  from  get- 
ting past  the  drawing  stage  in  writing  and  launching  out 
into  a  movement  involving  the  larger  muscles,  thereby 
coming  into  possession  of  the  muscle-sense  control.  With- 
out this  free,  larger  movement  the  tactile  and  kinaesthetic 
sense  control  can  never  be  developed  to  any  great  extent. 

SPEED. 

As  has  already  been  stated,  the  forearm  movement  is 
the  one  affording  the  greatest  speed,  and  the  natural 


100  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

slant  is  the  slope  which  allows  the  most  rapid  writing. 
McAllister  found  that  the  up  strokes  took  more  time  than 
the  down  strokes,  hence  lifting  the  pen  hastened  writing 
and  relieved  the  strain.  Woodworth  in  his  experiments 
found  that  there  is  a  limit  beyond  which  an  increase  in 
speed  does  not  produce  much  greater  inaccuracy,  because 
then  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  control  the  movements 
separately,  hence  much  has  to  be  left  to  the  automatic 
uniformity  of  the  hand's  movements. 

PRACTICE. 

Since  the  acquirement  of  writing  is  such  a  complex, 
difficult  process  and  one  that  takes  time  and  practice  to 
enable  the  child  to  gain  muscle-sensation  control,  to  pos- 
sess himself  of  a  system  of  resident  sensations  which  will 
sense  the  adjustments  as  they  take  place  and  control 
thereby  each  successive  movement,  a  careful  consideration 
of  the  best  means  of  practice  is  important.  Woodworth 
concluded  that  the  accuracy  of  the  original  impulse  is 
slight  compared  with  the  additions  made  by  later  adjust- 
ments, when  situations  are  presented  which  permit  of 
great  accuracy. 

Practice  for  practice  sake  soon  degenerates  into  care- 
lessness and  becomes  very  tiresome;  as  is  clearly  demon- 
strated in  copybook  work  where  each  added  line  below 
tends  to  become  more  and  more  unlike  the  copy  above,  and 
to  show  greater  and  greater  carelessness.  In  copybook 
work  the  emphasis  tends  to  be  upon  the  visual  control 
because  the  teacher  insists  that  the  product  resulting  from 
the  movements  shall  be  as  nearly  like  the  model  as  pos- 
sible. A  copybook  may  be  profitably  used  as  a  corrective 
of  form,  as  a  dictionary  is  the  standard  consulted  when 
one  is  in  doubt  about  the  spelling  of  words,  but  a  child 
who  writes  in  copybooks  chiefly  during  his  earlier  years 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  101 

will  never  become  through  such  practice  a  rapid  writer 
using  an  easy,  free  movement. 

The  best  form  of  practice  is  the  life  form,  or  the  ex- 
pressing of  one's  own  thoughts  in  writing  while  thinking. 
Of  necessity  the  child  must  know  the  forms,  but  as  soon 
as  he  has  a  slight  knowledge  of  these,  he  should  begin  to 
write  his  own  thoughts,  for  in  so  doing  the  emphasis  is 
placed  upon  the  thought  to  be  expressed  and  as  a  result 
the  kinassthetic  and  tactile  sensations  learn  to  take  care  of 
the  writing  act.  This  is  the  ultimate  aim  in  the  teaching 
of  writing  and  the  one  that  ought  to  be  kept  constantly 
in  mind  as  the  goal  towards  which  all  practice  ought 
to  tend.  Original  composition  should  be  constantly  re- 
quired, for  through  this  work  the  child  will  be  trained 
to  write  the  product  of  his  thinking  with  the  greatest 
amount  of  ease,  rapidity,  and  legibility. 

Copybooks  can  profitably  be  used  as  reference  books  in 
which  to  look  up  the  correct  forms  of  some  of  the  letters 
incorrectly  written  by  some  children  in  their  composition 
work,  or  they  may  be  used  for  a  review  of  form  work  in 
penmanship.  For  this  last  use  it  is  wiser  to  have  the  pupils 
observe  the  correct  forms  of  the  troublesome  letters,  and 
then  write  these  letters  a  number  of  times,  after  which 
the  entire  copy  may  be  written  perhaps  once.  When  this 
is  done,  a  comparison  of  the  results  with  the  model  should 
be  made  by  each  pupil,  after  which  with  these  differences 
in  mind  he  should  try  again.  Better  far  is  a  little  thought- 
ful practice  on  the  form  in  which  each  child  is  his  own 
critic  than  hours  and  hours  of  careless  work;  only  success- 
ful practice  counts,  because  unsuccessful  practice  fixes 
wrong  co-ordinations,  and  these  are  only  overcome  or 
broken  down  after  long  and  strenuous  effort.  The  whole 
copybook  may  be  gone  through  in  some  such  thoughtful 
manner  as  has  been  indicated  above,  writing  only  a  few 


102  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

lines  each  time,  and  then  later  writing  through  the  book 
again,  a  few  lines  each  time,  to  show  all  the  improvement 
possible.  From  experimenting  in  actual  school  work  it 
has  been  found  that  the  best  results  are  obtained  in  writ- 
ing by  having  the  writing  the  expression  of  thought,  once 
the  initial  stage  of  learning  has  been  passed,  and  then  use 
the  copy  book  as  a  reference  and  for  corrective  work  when 
needed  most. 

LAW  OF  SHORT  EXERCISES. 

Johnson  found  in  his  experiments  that  after  the  drawing 
of  the  third  circle  the  subjects  began  to  make  inaccuracies. 
He  concluded  that  when  practice  is  continued  until  the 
movement  becomes  irregular,  then  the  practice  becomes 
positively  injurious  for  the  reason  that  the  irregular  move- 
ments become  incorporated  in  the  chain  of  reaction  as  surely 
as  do  the  well-directed  ones.  Practice  may  thus  tend  to 
establish  irregular  adjustments  as  well  as  regular  ones.  If 
wrong  adjustments  are  made,  then  these  delay  the  develop- 
ment of  the  control  over  the  muscles  for  accurate  adjust- 
ment. Woodworth  concluded  that  only  successful  prac- 
tice counted.  This  means  in  actual  practice  that  long 
writing  periods,  during  which  the  child  is  allowed  to 
dwaddle  along  in  an  inaccurate  fashion,  are  worse  than 
none  at  all;  in  other  words,  profitable  practice  periods  in 
writing  should  be  short.  A  number  of  short  periods  with 
intervals  of  rest  or  change  of  work  are  much  more  bene- 
ficial than  an  equal  amount  of  time  in  one  long  practice 
period. 

STANDARD  FOR  JUDGING  WRITING. 

What  standard  should  guide  the  teacher  when  judging 
the  handwriting  of  pupils?  The  world's  standard  is  that 
the  writing  shall  be  legible,  and  that  the  writer  shall  be 
able  to  write  quickly  and  easily.  Most  teachers  are  in  the 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  103 

habit  of  judging  of  a  child's  writing  whether  it  be  good 
or  bad  by  the  approximation  to  or  the  difference  from  the 
set  copy;  that  is,  the  child  is  expected  to  make  every  letter 
according  to  the  copybook  style,  size,  slant,  etc. 

Johnson  found  in  his  experiment  in  which  he  had  the 
subjects  draw  circles  from  copies  that  some  of  the  subjects 
increased  while  others  decreased  the  size  of  the  successive 
circles  drawn,  and  from  this  concluded  that  each  individual 
has  a  certain  adjustment  of  the  muscles  in  writing  and 
drawing  which  should  be  taken  into  consideration  when 
training  the  muscles  for  accurate  adjustment.  From  ob- 
servation it  is  easy  to  see  that  each  individual  almost  has 
his  own  peculiar  style  and  size  of  handwriting.  Preyer 
classed  all  writing  as  being  either  natural  or  artificial, 
and  under  the  head  of  artificial  he  placed  the  writing  of 
children.  In  the  very  first  stages  the  child's  writing  must 
of  necessity  be  artificial,  as  a  copy,  the  teacher's  writing, 
is  imitated;  but  if  the  child  is  allowed  freedom  of  choice 
in  the  matter,  his  writing  will  more  and  more  approach 
the  natural.  So  much  individuality  is  shown  in  handwrit- 
ing that  graphology  has  come  to  be  an  established  study, 
and  many  books  on  the  subject  have  been  published.  One 
author  writes:  "Every  act  of  a  man's  life  bears  the  stamp 
of  his  personality  .  .  .  The  timid  person  who  gives  you 
a  weak,  fishy  handshake  writes  a  timid,  weak  hand,  and 
the  virile  man  who  grasps  you  firmly  writes  a  firm,  decided 
hand.  Vivacious  persons  do  not  produce  nerveless  scrawls, 
neither  do  lethargic  persons  wield  nimble  pens"  (36,  p.  3). 
If  the  child  is  compelled  to  write  artificially,  following 
calligraphic  instruction  so  closely  that  individual  charac- 
teristics almost  vanish,  the  chances  are  that  he  may  never 
write  naturally,  forming  the  letters  and  joining  them  in 
an  entirely  individual  way.  In  all  correspondence  we  in- 
stinctively judge  one  another  by  handwriting.  We  com- 


104  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

ment  upon  its  legibility  or  clearness,  its  tidiness  or  sloven- 
liness, and  form  our  opinion  of  the  writer  accordingly. 

A  recent  extremely  significant  and  valuable  contribution 
has  been  made  to  educational  psychology  by  Dr.  E.  L. 
Thorndike  of  Columbia  University  in  the  presentation  of 
his  scale  of  handwriting,  by  means  of  which  the  quality  of 
a  sample  of  penmanship  may  be  measured.  It  is  the  first 
attempt  of  its  kind  and  its  application  ought  to  appeal  to 
every  teacher  of  writing.  Although  Dr.  Thorndike  has  not 
completed  the  scale  to  his  entire  satisfaction,  yet  he  has 
made  his  results  public  and  hopes  in  time  to  bring  them  to 
a  high  stage  of  perfection.  He  has  very  kindly  consented 
to  allow  his  scale  to  be  reproduced  in  the  present  work  and 
has  suggested  the  samples  of  quality  of  most  practical 
value  to  teachers,  and  these,  he  thinks,  would  give  a  clearer 
idea  than  his  more  elaborate  series.* 

The  scale  was  constructed  by  having  from  twenty-three 
to  fifty-five  competent  judges  rank,  say  1000,  samples  of 
children's  writing  selected  from  the  best  to  the  worst  hand- 
writing found  in  grades  5  to  8.  In  trying  to  rank  1000 
samples  in  order  of  merit,  the  judges  found  that  they  could 
not  make  1000  such  ranks,  since  some  of  the  handwritings 
were  indistinguishable  in  "goodness"  or  "quality"  or 
"merit."  Neither  could  100  such  ranks  be  made,  nor  40, 
but  only  about  20.  The  judges  found  that  even  when  they 
made  20  ranks  of  the  samples  a  number  of  times,  they  got 
substantially  the  same  average  results  as  when  they  ranked 
them  a  number  of  times  in  10  or  11  groups.  To  get  an 
individual's  judgment  of  the  relative  merits  of  the  1000 
samples  it  is  sufficient  to  have  him  rank  them  into  10  or  1 1 
groups  three  or  four  times.  If  he  grades  in  ten  groups 
and  tries  to  make  the  differences  all  equal,  we  have  in  the 
average  results  (except  for  certain  factors  which  Dr. 

*Thorndike,  Edward  L.  Handwriting,  Teachers'  College  Record, 
March,  1910.  Columbia  University  Press,  New  York  city. 


Specimens  of  Quality  selected  and  reproduced  by  per- 
mission from  Teachers  College  Record,  Vol.  XI,  No.  2. 

HANDWRITING,  by  Edward  L.  Thorndike. 


106  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   IVriling. 


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Pedagogy  of   Writing. 


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Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 


Pedagogy  of  Writing.  113 

Thorndike  explains  fully  in  section  7  of  his  work)  of  his 
grouping  his  judgment  of  the  relative  merits  of  the  sam- 
ples in  a  specially  convenient  form. 

SCALE  A  (As  suggested). — A  Scale  for  Handwriting  of 
Children  in  Grades  5-8. 

The  unit  of  the  original  scale  equals  approximately  one- 
tenth  of  the  difference  between  the  best  and  worst  of  the 
formal  writings  of  1000  children  in  grades  5-8.  The  dif- 
ferences 16-15,  15-14,  14-13,  etc.,  represent  equal  fractions 
of  the  combined  mental  scale  of  merit  of  from  23-55  com- 
petent judges. 

Sample  140  represents  zero  merit  in  handwriting. 
Zero  merit  is  arbitrarily  defined  as  that  of  a  handwriting, 
recognizable  as  such,  but  yet  not  legible  at  all  and  pos- 
sessed of  no  beauty. 

In  the  original  scale  the  use  of  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  14, 
15,  16  and  17  for  these  qualities  of  handwriting  means  that 
11  is  as  much  better  than  10  as  10  is  than  9,  and  also  that 
14  is  twice  as  far  above  0  merit  in  handwriting  as  quality 
7  is.  The  use  of  several  samples  under  one  quality  means 
that  those  samples  are  of  equal  merit.  As  many  different 
styles  as  could  be  obtained  are  shown,  so  that  in  using  the 
scale  the  merit  of  any  sample  of  any  style  of  writing  can 
be  readily  ascertained  by  comparison  with  the  scale.  Qual- 
ity 5  represents  the  worst  writing  of  fourth  grade  children, 
quality  7  is  nearly  the  worst  writing  of  fifth  grade  children, 
while  quality  17  is  nearly  the  best  writing  of  eighth  grade 
children. 

To  measure  a  specimen  of  handwriting,  put  it  alongside 
the  scale,  and  see  to  what  point  on  the  scale  it  is  nearest. 
For  convenience  the  entire  scale  should  be  in  view 
when  the  sample  is  to  be  examined.  The  measurer 
should  be  careful  not  to  decide  the  grade  because  of  like- 
ness in  style,  but  only  because  of  likeness  in  quality.  If, 


114  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of   Writing. 

for  instance,  a  pronounced  vertical  sample  is  really  of  qual- 
ity 7,  one  must  not  call  it  quality  9  because  it  is  in  style 
more  like  sample  21  than  like  the  sample  of  quality  7. 
Observers  using  the  scale  will  disagree  as  to  the  merit  of 
a  sample  of  handwriting.  This  is  not  the  fault  of  the  scale, 
for  without  it  the  observers  will  differ  still  more  widely. 
Two  people  will  not  find  a  given  line  to  be  exactly  the  same, 
and  yet  they  will  agree  better  than  if  they  had  no  scale  to 
use.  At  present  we  can  do  no  better  than  estimate  a  hand- 
writing as  very  bad,  bad,  good,  very  good,  or  extremely 
good,  knowing  only  vaguely  what  we  mean  by  these  terms, 
running  the  risk  of  shifting  our  standards  with  time,  and 
only  by  chance  meaning  the  same  by  a  word  as  some  other 
student  of  the  facts  means  by  it.  As  Dr.  Thorndike  says, 
we  are  in  the  condition  in  which  students  of  temperature 
were  before  the  discovery  of  the  thermometer  or  any  other 
scale  for  measuring  temperature  beyond  the  very  hot,  hot, 
warm,  lukewarm,  and  the  like,  of  subjective  opinion.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  this  graphometer  or  scale  for  handwriting 
may  be  of  practical  value  to  every  teacher  of  writing. 

The  scale  has  many  uses,  only  a  few  given  by  the  orig- 
inator of  the  scale  will  be  noted.  Any  measurement  of  the 
quality  of  handwriting  may  be  made  more  accurately  and 
conveniently  with  the  scale,  either  actually  present  or  held 
in  memory,  than  without  it. 

The  class-room  teacher  has  to  measure  the  quality  of  a 
single  pupil's  handwriting  in  order  to  assign  him  a  rating 
in  comparison  with  his  fellows  and,  better  still,  in  com- 
parison with  his  past  work.  She  can  use  the  scale  by  giving 
its  numerical  measures  outright  or  by  letting  her  A,  B,  C's, 
or  75,  80,  82,  etc.,  per  cents,  or  excellents,  goods,  fairs,  etc., 
mean  certain  points  on  the  scale.  If  she  does  this,  her 
ratings  will  have  a  definite  meaning  to  the  pupil,  the  same 
meanings  that  similar  ratings  by  other  teachers  in  the 
school  have,  and  thus  may  be  used  to  measure  the  actual 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  115 

improvement  of  the  pupil  month  by  month  and  year  by 
year. 

A  superintendent  of  schools,  principal  or  supervisor 
needs  to  measure  the  quality  of  the  handwriting  of  indi- 
viduals, of  classes,  of  all  classes  of  the  same  grade  in  a 
school  or  system.  With  the  scale  he  can  honestly  measure 
and  compare  the  work  of  one  teacher  with  that  of  another, 
the  work  within  his  own  school  or  system  with  that  of  other 
schools  or  systems  and  with  that  of  his  own  some  years 
later.  A  supervisor  can  inform  his  teachers  of,  say,  grade 
7,  that  the  minimum  requirement  is,  perhaps,  quality  11,  at 
a  rate  of  50  letters  per  minute.  The  business  men  can 
decide  what  quality  they  desire  the  schools  to  secure  in  the 
fourteen-year-old  boy  who  is  to  apply  for  clerical  positions. 

Even  pupils  themselves  may  profitably  know  and  use  the 
scale.  They  may  see  by  it  what  is  expected  of  them,  and 
may  tell  how  nearly  they  reach  the  standard  and  how  much 
they  have  gained. 

RELATION  OF  WRITING  TO  SCHOOL  INTELLIGENCE 
AND  SEX. 

After  examining  12,600  specimens  of  papers  written  by 
the  pupils  in  the  public  schools  of  Worcester,  Mass.,  Gesell 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  for  a  large  number  of  cases 
accuracy  in  the  writing  of  pupils  of  elementary  grades 
tends  to  vary  directly  with  school  intelligence.  Careless- 
ness in  any  motor  function  seems  to  bespeak  the  same 
qualities  in  the  general  school  work  of  children  in  the 
elementary  school.  Kavanagh  found  the  lowest  correla- 
tion between  handwriting  and  other  abilities,  as  compared 
with  other  subjects.  These  experiments  are  sufficient  to 
show  that  writing  depends  upon  the  development  of  higher 
centers,  upon  quickness  and  sureness  of  action,  upon  the 
power  to  concentrate  attention,  etc. 


116  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

From  the  fifth  grade  up  through  the  high  school,  Gesell 
found  that  girls  as  a  class  write  more  accurately  than 
boys,  boys  as  early  as  the  first  grade  showing  a  greater 
degree  of  inco-ordination  in  writing.  The  sex  difference 
in  writing  seems  to  become  marked  about  the  age  of  ten 
and  is  largely  attributable  to  the  mental  factors;  hence 
in  teaching,  those  differences  need  to  be  considered.  Meu- 
mann  found  that  men  tended  to  write  with  a  totality  of 
impulse  and  with  a  maximum  pressure  in  a  word,  while 
women  were  more  painstaking  and  wrote  with  several 
maxima  pressures  in  a  word.  With  an  increase  in  speed, 
the  pressure  was  greater  in  the  case  of  men  and  lighter 
with  women.  In  school,  boys  need  to  be  encouraged  to 
be  more  careful  and  accurate,  while  girls  need  to  be  urged 
to  attempt  larger  will  impulses  and  to  secure  thereby  a 
larger,  freer  movement. 

RIGHT  AND  LEFT-HANDEDNESS. 

There  have  been  many  theories  as  to  the  reason  why 
most  people  are  right-handed  and  some  few  left-handed, 
but  here  only  the  most  generally  accepted  one  will  be  men- 
tioned. It  is  now  quite  generally  believed  by  psycholo- 
gists that  a  person  is  right  or  left-handed  according  to 
the  manner  of  the  branching  of  the  arteries  carrying  the 
supply  of  blood  to  the  brain.  If  the  larger  supply  of 
blood  is  sent  to  the  left  half  of  the  brain,  then  the  person 
is  right-handed,  and  vice  versa.  As  a  result,  the  speech 
center  is  more  fully  developed  in  the  third  left  frontal 
convolution  for  the  dextral  than  in  the  opposite  side  of 
the  brain  (20,  p.  364).  This  developed  center  controls  the 
actions  of  the  right  hand.  There  seems  to  be  a  close  rela- 
tion between  the  speech  and  writing  centers,  as  the  latter 
is  developed  in  the  same  half  of  the  brain  as  the  former. 

What  then  will  a  teacher  dp  with  a  left-handed  boy? 


Pedagogy   of   Writing.  117 

Ought  she  to  try  to  force  him  to  use  his  right  hand?  It 
has  been  found  by  investigation  that  left-handed  children 
who  have  been  made  to  learn  to  write  with  their  right 
hands,  never  in  later  life  reach  the  point  where  they  can 
write  with  any  degree  of  speed  and  ease.  The  location 
of  the  speech  center  that  is  so  closely  related  to  that  of 
writing  cannot  be  changed,  hence  it  is  much  better  not  to 
try  to  make  a  naturally  left-handed  child  write  with  his 
right  hand,  because  it  leads  to  confusion  in  thinking  and 
lower  ability  in  writing. 

CROSS-EDUCATION. 

The  subject  of  cross-education  is  an  extremely  interest- 
ing one,  attracting  such  psychologists  as  Scripture,  Bryan, 
Davis,  etc.  These  men  all  found  that  the  effect  of  practice 
on  one  side  of  the  body  is  transferred  in  some  degree  to 
the  unpracticed  side,  the  transference  being  greatest  to 
symmetrical  and  closely  related  parts.  There  is  a  very 
close  connection,  Davis  thinks,  between  different  parts  of 
the  muscular  system  through  nervous  means,  parts  related 
in  function  or  in  position  being  more  closely  connected. 
He  also  concluded  that  will  power  and  attention  when 
developed  for  any  special  act  are  developed  for  all  other 
acts.  The  effects  of  muscular  practice  seems  to  be  central 
rather  than  peripheral.  The  two  central  effects  seem  to 
be  (1)  the  development  of  motor  centers,  and  (2)  the 
development  of  attention  and  will  power.  That  is,  when 
a  child  is  trained  to  write  with  the  right  hand,  and  the 
writing  center  with  its  sensory  and  motor  sides  is  well 
developed  and  the  child  has  the  power  of  concentrating 
the  attention  upon  any  subject  or  act  and  the  ability  to 
will  impulses  in  writing  words  or  parts  of  words,  then  if 
he  attempts  for  any  reason  to  write  with  the  left  hand,  he 
will  find  that  he  can  do  so  fairly  well.  All  that  is  needed 


118  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

in  such  a  case  is  practice  in  manipulating  the  left  hand. 
If  one  will  but  try  to  write  with  his  left  hand,  he  will  be 
surprised  to  see  how  well  it  can  be  done,  even  though  it  be 
the  first  trial. 

Since  this  is  true  it  must  be  self-evident  to  all  that  it  is 
a  waste  of  time  and  a  detriment  to  the  child  for  the  teacher 
to  endeavor  to  meet  emergencies  by  training  the  child 
to  write  with  each  hand.  It  is  much  better  for  a  child 
to  be  able  to  write  automatically  and  legibly  with  one  hand 
than  fairly  well  with  both.  Some  have  claimed  that  for 
the  sake  of  the  symmetrical  development  of  the  child  he 
should  be  made  ambidextrous.  The  facts  already  discussed 
concerning  the  development  of  the  speech  center  in  the 
left  side  of  the  brain  in  right-handed  people,  and  the  inti- 
mate connection  between  this  and  the  development  of  the 
writing  center,  go  to  show  that  if  an  attempt  were  made 
to  make  the  child  ambidextrous  it  would  result  in  the  dis- 
organization of  the  speech  center  and  lead  to  poor  expres- 
sion of  thought.  The  localization  of  the  speech  center 
comes  down  through  a  long  line  of  ancestry,  and  any  train- 
ing contrary  to  evolution  is  always  more  or  less  detri- 
mental to  the  fullest  development  of  the  mental  powers, 
hence  no  one  should  attempt  to  make  a  left-handed  child 
right-handed,  because  of  the  peculiar  organism  of  the 
child's  brain. 

RELATION  OF  WRITING  AND  SPELLING. 

The  necessity  of  having  the  act  of  writing  as  nearly 
automatic  as  possible,  so  that  the  mind  may  be  centered 
upon  the  thought  to  be  expressed  is  apparent  to  all. 
Writing  has  to  be  acquired  with  a  more  or  less  degree  of 
consciousness,  under  the  control  of  the  higher  centers,  but 
the  ultimate  aim  should  be  to  relegate  writing  to  the 
control  of  the  spinal  cord  so  that  we  may  write  as  auto- 


Pedagogy  of   Writing.  1 1 9 

matically  and  unconsciously  as  we  walk.  In  order  to  do 
this  the  attention  must  not  be  delayed  or  attracted  by  any 
doubt  in  regard  to  the  spelling  of  any  word,  but  the  spell- 
ing itself  must  also  be  as  automatic  as  walking.  The 
automatic  development  of  writing  and  spelling  must  go 
on  together,  each  depending  upon  the  other  for  advance- 
ment. The  only  way  to  bring  this  development  about  is 
to  make  the  original  composition  work  the  test  and  basis 
of  practice  for  both  spelling  and  writing.  Writing  words 
in  lists,  where  the  thought  is  upon  the  form  entirely,  will 
never  make  the  child  entirely  successful  in  the  use  of  the 
same  words  in  original  composition  where  the  mind  must 
of  necessity  be  upon  the  thought  to  be  expressed.  Dicta- 
tion work,  another  step  in  advance  of  list  spelling,  in 
which  the  thought  to  be  expressed  is  given  to  the  child 
and  he  has  only  to  hold  the  same  in  mind  and  to  express 
it,  will  not  lead  to  the  automatic  writing  advocated,  but 
serves  as  one  of  the  legitimate  and  necessary  steps  by 
which  this  end  may  be  attained.  The  only  kind  of  prac- 
tice in  writing  and  spelling  that  will  bring  about  automatic 
writing  is  to  have  the  child  think  his  own  thoughts,  as  he 
will  have  to  do  in  later  life,  and  then  express  these  in 
writing  as  rapidly  and  legibly  as  possible. 

Most  teachers  think  that  when  they  have  taught  the 
forms  in  writing  and  given  the  child  some  ideas  of  correct 
movement  and  position,  that  their  work  is  ended,  but  such 
is  by  no  means  the  case,  for  the  child  has  only  begun  to 
learn  to  write.  It  is  the  work  of  the  teacher  to  see  that 
the  right  kind  of  practice  is  carried  on  until  the  child  has 
learned  to  put  the  least  degree  of  consciousness  into  his 
writing  act.  In  the  same  way  teachers  have  thought  that 
when  a  child  was  able  to  spell  a  word  that  then  the  work 
in  spelling  was  done,  and  another  word  would  be  taken  up, 
and  so  on;  but  words  thus  learned  are  soon  forgotten. 


120  Psychology  and  Pedagogy   of   Writing. 

The  work  of  learning  to  spell  has  only  just  begun  when 
the  child  is  able  to  name  and  write  the  letters.  It  remains 
for  him  to  learn,  through  practice  in  expressing  his  own 
thoughts,  to  be  able  to  use  the  word  in  different  contexts 
and  to  write  it  automatically.  In  order  to  do  this  much 
practice  is  necessary,  and  original  thinking  not  only  gives 
variety  enough  to  keep  up  the  interest  and  attention  of 
the  child,  but  above  all,  it  is  the  form  of  writing  required 
in  after  life.  Both  writing  and  spelling  should  ultimately 
be  controlled  by  the  lower  neutral  centers,  leaving  the 
higher  centers  free  for  thinking. 

If  teachers  would  only  follow  out  these  suggestions, 
there  would  be  a  happy  and  profitable  revolution  in  the 
teaching  of  writing  and  spelling  in  our  public  schools; 
children  would  not  only  be  relieved  of  the  tedious,  dis' 
tasteful  and  harmful  drill,  causing  them  to  dislike  school 
and  drop  out  as  soon  as  the  age  limit  is  reached,  but  more 
efficient  and  powerful  students  would  be  graduated  from 
our  schools.  Then  the  world's  accusation  that  children 
do  not  know  how  to  spell  and  write  their  mother  tongue 
would  no  longer  be  so  commonly  heard  and  generally  true. 


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Ed.,  Vol.  II.     London:  Churchill,  1883. 

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and  Power,  Studies  from  Yale  Psy.  Lab.,  1892-97. 

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40.  Swift,  Edgar  J.,  Mind  in  the  Making.     N.  Y.:  Chas.  Scribner's 

Sons,  1908. 

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kind and   the   Development  of  Civilization.     London:   John 
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Rev.,  Mon.  Sup.,  Vol.  III.,  No.  2,  July,  1899. 


INDEX 

Accuracy  of  voluntary  movement.  56-59  ;  Woodworth's  experiments,  57-59. 

Act  of  writin,  70-73  ;  Judd's  experiments,  71-73 ;  fig.  of  tracing  movement,  71. 

Agraphia,  45,  47,  48 ;  motor  agraphia,  48. 

Alignment,  60,  61,  91. 

Alphabet,  historical  development  of,  Chap.  II ;  origin  of,  27,  29-33 ;  Latin 
alphabet,  33 ;  evolution  of,  18-29 ;  mnemonic  stage,  18-21 ;  ideograms,  18, 
21-22 ;  phonograms,  18,  23-29  ;  development  of  alphabetic  signs,  27 ;  conso- 
nants, 28. 

AMBRONN,  40. 

Analysis  of  writing,  84-86 :  children  write  letters  singly,  84 ;  Storring's 
anatomical  chart,  85 ;  anticipatory  writing,  86 ;  spontaneous  writing,  86. 

ANGBLL,  42,  43. 

Aphasia,  44,  45,  47 :  kinds  of,  44,  45  ;  cortical,  45  ;  sensorial,  45  ;  motor,  45  ; 
led  to  discovery  of  special  centers,  45. 

Association  centers,  42. 

Ataxagraph,  69. 

BALDWIN,  45,  82. 

BAWDEN,  62. 

BERNHEIM,  48. 

BINET,  77. 

BOOK,  91. 

Brain  areas,  42,  43. 

BROCA,  45. 

BRISSAND,  48. 

BRITTON,  23. 

BRYAN,  50,  51,  52.  53,  54,  55,  56,  87,  88,  96. 

BRYAN  &  HARTER,  66. 

BURK,  37,  69. 

CHARCOT,  48. 

CLODD,  19,  20,  22,  28,  33,  35. 

COLLINS,  46,  47,  48. 

Connecting  letters,  76,  98,  99. 

Control  processes,  91-95. 

Copybook,  100,  101,  102. 

COURTIER,  77. 

Cross-education,  68.  69  :  references  to  experiments  of  Scripture,  68 ;  Bryan, 
68 ;  Davis,  68,  69  ;  117,  118. 

CURTIS,  70,  89. 

DAVIS,  68.  69.  117. 

Diffusion,  49,  50,  S3,  84,  95,  96. 

DONALDSON,  40,  87. 

DOWNEY,  61.  91 

PRTIMAJOND.  I-     Ki, 

J.25 


126  Psychology    and   Pedagogy    of    Writing. 

Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  27-28 ;  earliest  extant  inscription  in  the  world,  27  ; 

alphabetic  symbols  found  in,  27 ;  letters  older  than  the  pryamids,  28. 
Emotion,  influence  on  movement,  63,  64,  93. 
EVANS,  31. 

Evolution,  of  language,  15  ;  of  writing,  16. 
EXNER,  46,  47. 

Experiments  tearing  on  the  psychology  of  writing,  Chap.  III. 
FLECHSIZ,  38,  40,  86. 
FULLERTON  &  CATTRELL,  63,  93. 
GESELL,  79,  SO,  115,  116. 
GILBERT,  50,  51,  52,  53,  54,  55,  56,  87,  88. 
Government  of  the  extent  of  a  movement,  60,  61. 
GOULD,  116. 

Graphic-motor  or  writing  center,  46-49  ;  arguments  against,  46-48  ;  116. 
GRASSET,  48. 
Hierachy  of  control,  39. 
HOFFMAN,  21,  22,  23. 
HALE,  21. 
HELD,  40. 

HANCOCK,  69,  70,  89. 
HUEY,  14. 

Ideograms,  kinds,  pictures  or  actual  representations  of  objects  and  pictorial 
symbols  suggesting  abstract  ideas,  21 ;  marks  for  cattle  branding,  sur- 
vivals of,  22  ;  totems,  22  ;  combination  of  simple  ideograms,  22. 

Images,  kinds,  concrete  and  abstract,  44. 

Inaccuracies  due  to  perception  and  movement,  63,  64  ;  Fullerton  and  Catell's 

experiments,  63 ;  Miinsterberg's  studies  of  movement,  63,  64. 

Individuality  in  writing,  49,  50,  84,  95. 

Inhibition,  70. 

Initial  adjustment  and  current  control,  59,  60 ;  Woodworth's  experiments,  60. 

JACKSON,  38,  39,  86. 

JOHNSON,  64,  65,  102,  103. 

JUDD,  49,  71,  72,  73,  74,  83,  99. 

KAVANAGH,  80,  115. 

Kina;sthetic,  report  of  movement,  61,  62,  92,  94. 

KIRKPATRICK,  83. 

Kymograph,  57,  60. 

Language,  theory  of  the  evolution  of,  15  ;  early  principle  in  the  course  of 
evolution,  co-operation.  15  ;  this  depended  upon  the  ability  to  communi- 
cate, 16 ;  three  kinds  of  language— a  sign  or  gesture,  a  note  or  word,  an 
intonation,  16. 

Learning  to  write,  83,  84. 

Left-handedness,  116,  117. 

Legibility,  76,  97.  98. 

Lesion,  leading  to  aphasia,  44,  45. 

Lines,  value  of,  60,  61,  62 

LOMBARD,  56. 

MARIE,  48. 

MCALLISTER,  74,  75, 76,  77,  97,  98,  100. 

McDOUGALL,  92,  93. 

Medullation,  39,  40,  86. 

Method  of  teaching  writing,  90,  91. 

MEUMANN,  78,  79,  84,  85,  86,  90,  91,  93,  99. 


Index.  127 

Mnemonic  stage  of  writing,  18-21 ;  quipu,  18-20 ;  flg.  19 ;  tally  sticks,  "nick- 
sticks,"  etc.,  20 ;  wampum,  20-21,  flg.  21. 

MORAT,  44,  45. 
MOSSO,  39,  40,  41. 

Movements  used  in  writing,  69,  70;  Hancock's  experiments,  69,  70;  Curtis' 
studies  of  inhibition,  70  ;  best  movement,  95-97. 

MCNSTERBERG,  63,  64,  93. 

Nervous   system,   from  fundamental   to   accessory,   37,  38,  41 ;   "devolution," 

41,  42. 

Neurological  analysis  of  writing,  37-50  ;  antecedent  of  voluntary  movement, 
37-42  ;  brain  areas,  42,  43 ;  aphasia,  44,  45  ;  writing  center,  46 ;  complexity  of 

the  writing  movement,  49  ;  diffusion,  49,  50. 
Origin  of  handwriting,  82,  83  ;  imitation  of  movement  observed,  82 ;  tracery 

imitation,  82  ;  "trial  and  success"  method,  82. 

PEARSON,  80. 

Peripheral  unsteadiness,  70,  89,  90. 

Phonograms,  rebus  writing,  23 ;  phonograms  arose  from  necessity  of  express- 
ing proper  names,  23-24,  figs.  23  and  24 ;  Chinese  characters  conventional- 
ized ideograms,  24,  25 :  syllabism,  25 ;  how  the  Japanese  developed  theirs 
from  the  Chinese,  25-26 ;  alphabetic  signs,  27-28 ;  phonographic  and  ideo- 
graphic signs  still  used,  28-29. 

PITRES,  48. 

Practice  and  habit,  64-68;  experiments,  Johnson,  64,  65;  Swift,  65,  66;  Bryan 

and  Harter,  66  ;  Book,  66 ;  Scripture,  66-68  ;  Woodworth,  68 ;  practice  for 

practice  sake,  100 ;  best  form  of,  101. 

PREYER,  78. 

Preparedness,  or  muscular  tension,  38. 

Pressure  in  writing,  77,  78  ;  maximum,  78,  93 ;  making  only  the  characteristic 
strokes  adds  to  speed  and  restfulness  in  writing,  98,  99. 

Pronation,  73,  74 ;  Judd's  experiments,  73,  74 ;  movement  of,  98. 

Psychical  images,  44. 

Psycho-physical  analysis  of  writing,  50-80  ;  rapidity  of  movement,  50-56  ;  accu- 
racy of  voluntary  movement,  56-59  ;  initial  adjustment  and  current  control, 
59,  GO ;  sensory  basis  for  control  of  movement,  60-63  ;  inaccuracies  due  to 
perception  and  movement,  63,  64 ;  practice  and  habit,  64-68 ;  cross-educa- 
tion, 68,  69 ;  movements  used  in  writing,  69,  70 ;  peripheral  unsteadiness, 
70 ;  act  of  writing,  70-73  ;  pronation,  73,  74  ;  slope,  74-77  ;  best  movement,  77 ; 
types.  77-79;  relation  of  accuracy  in  writing  to  school  intelligence  an 
sex,  79,  80. 

Rapidity  of  movement.  50-56;  Bryan  and  Gilbert's  experiments  to  test  the 
Development  of  Voluntary  Motor  ability,  50-56 ;  Lombard's  weight-lift- 
ing experiment,  56. 

Reading  center,  46. 

Rebus  writing,  23 ;  simplest  kind  of  phonogram,  23 ;  why  children  like  rebus 
writing,  23  ;  bridges  over  the  gap  between  picture  ideograms  and  phonetic 
characters,  23,  figs.  23  and  24. 

Relation  of  accuracy  in  writing  to  school  intelligence  and  sex,  79,  80 ;  Ger- 
sell's  experiments,  79.  80  ;  115,  116. 

REXPORD,  103. 

Rolando  fissure,  42,  46,  47. 

ROSS,  37. 

Scale  of  handwriting   (Dr.  Thorndike's),  104-115;  explanation  of  scale  and 

use,  104,  113-115;  specimens  of  quality,  106-112. 
SCRIPTURE,  SMITH  AND  BROWN,  66,  67. 
Sensory  basis  for  control  of  movement,  60-63  ;  Woodworth's  experiments,  60, 

61,  C2,  63;  Downey's  experiments,  61,  62. 


128  Psychology    and   Pedagogy    of    Writing. 

Sensory  cue,  61,  62. 

SHEPARDSON,  37,  38,  39,  40,  42. 

Short  exercises,  law  of,  64-68,  100,  102. 

Slope,   74-77 ;    experiments   of  McAllister,  74-77 ;   uniformity   of,   95 ;   natural 

slant,  97,  98. 
Speed,  75-77,  95-97,  99. 
Standard  for  judging  writing,  102-115. 
ST6RRING,  85. 
STRICKER,  45. 
SWIFT,  65,  66. 
Syllabism,  25-27 ;  Japanese  writing  the  best  illustration  of,  25-26 ;  general 

law  of  development,  26 ;  illustrated  by  the  repeated  transmission  of  the 

cuneiform  writing,  26. 
TAYLOR,  17,  24,  25,  27,  28,  29,  30,  31,  32. 
THORND1KE,  104-115. 
Time  for  beginning  writing,  86-90. 
TYLOR,  24. 
Types  or  style  of  writing,  77-79 ;   three   types,  masculine,  78 ;  feminine,  78 ; 

children's,  78,  79 ;  Meumann's  experiments,  78,  79. 
Verbal  memory,  45. 
Visual  imagery  in  writing,  62,  63. 
Voluntary  movement,  antecedent  of,  37-42  ;  three-level  theory,  38,  39  ;  medulla- 

tion  of  nerve  fibers,  39,  40 ;  development  of  nervous  substance  through 

movement,  40,  41 ;  from  fundamental  to  accessory,  41. 
Weber's  law,  63. 

Whole  arm  movement,  77 ;  Woodworth's  experiments,  77. 
WOODWORTH,  57,  58,  59,  60,  61,  63,  68,  77,  88,  91,  92,  95,  99,  100. 
Word  blindness,  45. 
Word  deafness,  45. 

Writing  and  spelling,  relation  of,  118-120. 
Writing  .importance  of,  11 ;  a  tool  of  expression,  12 ;  antiquity  of,  12  ;  recent 

interest  in  the  subjects  of  voluntary  movement,  habit,   cross-education, 

etc.,  13  ;  direction  of,  35-36. 


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EDUCATION  AND  PSYCHOLOGY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


\;%TJu  LOAN 


JAN     9  191 


JL  OCT    3 1983 


UB. 

APR  2  7  1981 

RECEIVED 

APR  20 '81 -5PM 
tu/PSYCH  LIB 


NOV17'81  -2PM 


Form  L9-20m-8,'71  (P6343s8)4939A-3,59 


UCLA-ED/PSVCH  Library 

LB1536T37 


640  675  4 


